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THE LISTENING HEART 



L_ 



THE LISTENING 
HEART 

A Book of Devotional 
In t e rpretations 



BY 

JOHN A. KERN 

Author of M The Ministry to the Congregation" 
Professor Practical Theology^ Vanderbilt University 

Is it that God is silent 
' or that we are listless ? 



: 



Ne<w York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revel I Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1907, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



um&HY 6f congress! 

Two Gooies Received f 
WAY 27 I90f 
Cepyrisrht Entry 

CLASS* <** XXc, No. 

COPY 6. 5 



New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 80 Wabash Avenue 
Toronto : 25 Richmond St.,W. 
London : 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street 



i 



To 

KATRINA KEEN 

and the memory of 

another 





Page 


God's First Word 


15 


The Message of the Morning 


16 


The God of Heaven 


18 


How Can I Think upon God? 


20 


The Other Side of Prayer 


22 


A Prayer of Self-knowledge 


24 


The Reaction of Love 


26 


Listening and Obedient 


28 


Alone before God 


30 


The Call for Immortality 


32 


The Song of the Law 


34 


The Transformation of Life 


36 


The Power of Life 


38 


The Innermost Voice of God 


40 


Gratitude as Reward 


42 


The Higher Education 


44 


Thankful— for What? 


46 


The God of the Imperfect 


48 


The Significance of Childhood 


50 


Who Can Hear It? 

9 


52 



12 CONTENTS 






Page 


As a Grain of Mustard Seed 


154 


What is Thy Name? 


156 


To Whom is God Gracious? 


158 


The Deafness of Pride 


160 


Aspiration and Self-indulgence 


162 


An Impossible Faith 


164 


Gods Will as Known 


166 


The Cast-off Crowns 


168 


My Own Burden 


170 


What is Worth While? 


172 


The Insight of Love 


174 


Heartsease 


176 


How to Hear 


178 


The Serving King 


180 


Jesus Our King 


182 


The Prosperity of Love 


184 


Continuous Conversion 


186 


The Joy of Obedience 


188 


The Will to Hear 


190 


The Call into Darkness 


192 


Life in Death 


194 


How to Abound 


196 


The Life that Endures 


198 


The Giving of a Life 


200 


More than Conquerors 


202 



CONTENTS 


13 




Page 


Opportunity as Reward 


204 


Hearing for Others' Sake 


206 


The Other Side of Death 


208 


What Is It to Glorify God? 


210 


Benedicte 


212 


Benediction 


314 



GOD'S FIRST WORD 15 



GOD'S FIRST WORD 

" Before they call, I will answer." — Isa. Ixv. 24. 
Contextual reading, vv. 17-25. 

Not only will it be so when the kingdom of God 
shall have come in the glory foreseen in pro- 
phetic vision, but it is so here and now. 

The answer to a spoken prayer is not God's 
first word in the soul. The sense of need which 
accompanies and even goes before the cry for 
help is also from Him. The hunger for right- 
eousness, the spiritual unrest, the divine discon- 
tent, which as yet has found no language — it is 
in-breathed by His own Spirit. Then the prayer 
which follows is God's voice no less truly than 
ours. Unless He first came to us, we should 
never arise and come to Him. God of our life, 
we thank Thee for that consciousness of spiritual 
need and longing, however ill understood, which 
is Thy first great word in the soul. Speak, Lord, 
Thou who dost inspire what Thou Thyself 
wouldst hear, and waken in us the voice of 
prayer. So shall it indeed be true that before we 
call Thou hast answered. 



16 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE MESSAGE OF TEE MORNING 

" Cause me to hear Thy loving kindness in the morning, 
For in Thee do I trust." — Psa. cxliii. 8. 

Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

To awake in peace out of the dreamy uncon- 
sciousness of another night, to be greeted with 
gladness by those whom we love, to look forth 
upon the fresh beauty of the sky and the light, 
to feel the thrill of life renewed from without 
and within — this is to hear the voice of the morn- 
ing. Whence does it come but from the Source of 
nature without and of the answering soul with- 
in? For the morning is not self -moved or self- 
made. It is a beautiful thought and uttered word 
of God. He it is that commands, as in the be- 
ginning, Let there be light. It is His sun that 
rises rejoicing in strength for the splendid duty 
of the day. It is the glory of His presence that 
fills the earth, as a cup ready to overflow with 
trembling joy. Somewhere the day is always 
dawning, and everywhere it is a true dayspring 
from on high, its voice a message, its greeting a 
peace-greeting from the God of nature and of the 
soul. 



THE MESSAGE OF THE MORNING 17 

The psalmist's heart was desolate. We do not 
know who or what was the enemy that had smit- 
ten his life down to the ground ; but we do know 
whither he turned for relief. He stretched forth 
his hands unto God, thirsting for Him as a weary 
land for the rain of heaven. It was his prayer 
that with the passing of the night his grievous 
trial might also somehow pass away, and the 
voice of his Deliverer be heard in loving kindness 
again. " In the morning " — for the morning 
itself is a deliverance, — God's strong and gentle 
angel of resurrection. Its words unto the ends of 
the earth, with no articulate speech or language, 
are words of quickening power. 

Cause me, Lord, to hear that Divine speech in 
the wakening day. Waken my heart to listen to 
that voice which comes not from the round world 
or the over-arching sky, from winds or waters, 
from opening blossoms or blithesome birds, from 
sunset splendours or the dewy East and the tran- 
quil glories of the morning — that is not of them 
though in them all. Cause me to hear Thine own 
voice in loving kindness, saying, Behold, I make 
all things new. So may I live this day as those 
who are alive from the dead. 

" For in Thee do I trust." 



18 THE LISTENING HEAET 



TEE GOD OF HEAVEN 

" So I prayed to the God of heaven." — Neh, ii. 4. 
Contextual reading, vv. 1-6. 

Only in this book of Nehemiah is God spoken of 
or addressed in prayer as " the God of heaven." 
And the name might seem at first thought simply 
to enthrone Him on high. For is not heaven far, 
far above us? There are the blessed spirits, 
clothed with holiness, worshipping in glory, 

u There loyal hearts and true 
Stand ever in the light, 
All rapture through and through 
In God's most holy sight." 

But what comfort or encouragement is there 
for us who are of the earth, whose habitation is 
in the dust, to pray to the God of heaven? Much 
comfort and encouragement. For we have but 
to look up and see that the material heavens are 
high above the earth, and yet have it all the while 
in their closest keeping. They hold it fast in its 
awful orbit; they gather the clouds and send 
them down in fruitful showers; they pour forth 
the sunshine without which the earth would be 



THE GOD OF HEAVEN 19 

a kingdom of night and death. The material 
heavens are ours as truly as the sweet, quicken- 
ing air in our lungs, or the solid ground beneath 
our feet : they compass us about, nourishing our 
life moment by moment. What is farther away 
than the sun? What is closer at hand than the 
sunshine? And the highest meaning of it all is 
that of a symbol of the Divine love and care. As 
the material heavens are near our bodies, so 
heaven itself is near our spirits. Therefore the 
God of heaven, in His infinite majesty and good- 
ness, is also and equally our God, and is not 
far from every one of us. 

I know that the very heaven of heavens is the 
dwelling-place of the Holy One. But listen, my 
soul, for it is His own voice that speaks : " I dwell 
in the high and holy place, with him also that is 
of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the 
spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of 
the contrite. " O God of heaven, Thou art very 
near. Thou art the light on our path, the life 
that sustains our life, the heaven that ever broods 
above us with warmth and refuge in the shadow 
of its wings. 



20 THE LISTENING HEART 



HOW CAN I THINE UPON GOD? 

" When I remember Thee upon my bed, 
And meditate on Thee in the night-watches. 

— Psa. Ixiii. 6. 
Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

" Ah, tell me not of meditation upon God," the 
fainting heart is ready to exclaim. " I cannot 
attain unto it ; and if possible, what would it 
avail? Who by searching can find out the Eter- 
nal and Almighty? " But neither is there any 
other subject into which the meditative mind 
can penetrate more than a very little way. 
Nevertheless we may gather an ever-increasing 
store of knowledge about many things; and if 
we will, in it all may be gaining knowledge of 
Him without whom is nothing. " I will medi- 
tate on all Thy work, and muse on Thy doings " 
— which is to meditate on the Divine Doer Him- 
self. To look out upon the wondrous things of 
nature, or back upon the thrilling events of hu- 
man history, or within, awestruck, upon the 
abysm of personal being, in a reverent spirit, 
with an uplifted listening heart, is to come into 
the sanctuaries of God and learn of Him. I like 
the thrice-told legend of the great Augustine, 



HOW CAN I THINK UPON GOD? 21 

meditating by the seaside on the mystery of the 
Holy Trinity. A child was carrying water to fill 
a little cavity which he had scooped out in the 
sand. " What is the object of thy task? " asked 
the learned saint. " To empty into this cavity 
all the waters of the ocean." " Impossible." 
" Not more impossible," replied the child, " than 
for thee, O Augustine, to explain the mystery on 
which thou art meditating." True enough; yet 
the child might fill his sand-cup with water, and 
the man might fill his mind with the knowledge 
of God. 

But what is this other voice from the Psalms? 

" My flesh trembleth for fear of Thee ; 
And I am afraid of Thy judgments." 

How can the sinful draw near to think upon 
the name of the Holy One? It is only through 
reconciling love. " So, the All-Great were the 
All-Loving too? " And such He hath shown 
Himself to be, indeed. Such, in the very glory of 
righteousness and love, we find Him in Jesus 
Christ His Son, in whom we have redemption 
through His blood, even the remission of sins ac- 
cording to the riches of His grace. Let me find 
Thee, O God, in Jesus. Then verily shall my 
meditation of Thee be sweet, and " my mouth 
shall praise Thee with joyful lips." 



22 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE OTHER SIDE OF PRAYER 

" And Jehovah said unto Moses, Wherefore criest 
thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that 
they go forward. And lift thou up thy rod, and stretch 
out thy hand over the sea, and divide it." — Exodus 
xiv. 15, 16. 

Contextual reading, vv. 13-25. 

Was it useless then for the great elect leader to 
cry unto Jehovah? Not at all. But it was also 
necessary that he should speak unto Israel, and 
that he should lift up his own hand and stretch 
out the rod that had been given him to deliver 
the people withal from their degrading bond- 
age. It has been said that " on the night when 
Moses led Israel out of Egypt, history was born." 
That was indeed a momentous beginning. Yet 
the truth which this great world-event here illus- 
trates is equally a truth of the humblest and most 
private life — namely, that the other side of prayer 
is obedience. 

For prayer is no justifler of indolence. It is 
not an easy way of getting all one wishes, with- 
out cost of labour. It is no amulet to be worn, 
or charm to be chanted. Prayer is communion 



THE OTHEE SIDE OF PRAYER 23 

of the heart and co-operation of the will with 
the infinite and ever-present God. 

Suppose then I pray, " Bring me not into temp- 
tation/' and forthwith put myself needlessly in 
the path of temptation ; or pray " Teach me Thy 
truth," and am careless about doing the truth I 
know; or pray for others, and do not with self- 
denial serve them ; or ask deliverance out of some 
great sorrow and peril, and fail to stretch forth 
the rod of deliverance which God has placed in 
my own hand : such prayer is dead, being alone. 
It may come from the fulness of sentimental de- 
sire; it does not come from the fulness of the 
true-hearted will. Let me unlock my granary, 
or cease to say prayers for the poor. Let me con- 
tribute liberally to ministerial support, or join 
no longer in the petition that the Lord of the 
harvest will send forth labourers into His har- 
vest. 

" And oft, perverser yet, we wrest 
The tenor of the prayer divine, 
And urgent cry, 'My will, not Thine/ 
In most presumptuous request." 

Shall I ask, O Lord of life, that Thou shouldst 
do what I say, when meanwhile I am refusing 
to do what Thou dost say? Praying that Thy 
kingdom may come, let me go forth and be doing 
Thy will. 



24 THE LISTENING HEART 



a. PRAYER OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE 

" Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
the evil one"— Mat. vi. 13. 

Contextual reading, vv. 5-15. 

Even Jesus was u led up of the Spirit into the 
wilderness to be tempted of the devil." And it 
is certain that God permits, at least, His children 
to be tempted. Under His government and prov- 
idence, they are assailed by sundry evil sugges- 
tions. It is no less certain that God's children 
are tempted in the sense of being tried. Suffer- 
ing is appointed — pain of body, loss of goods, 
mental perplexity, wounded affections — such as 
will test their faith and endurance. 

What then is the purport of this petition which 
Jesus has taught us to offer? It is the language 
of the realised seriousness of a holy life, of its 
exposures and conflicts, and of the consequent 
need of Divine leadership and protection. There 
is said to be no more serious mistake in war than 
to underestimate the strength of the enemy. 
Jesus' disciples made this mistake at the begin- 
ning of their Christian warfare. " Even if I 
must die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee" — 



A PRAYER OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE 25 

so said self-confident Simon Peter, and " likewise 
also said all the disciples." But Jesus warned 
Simon Peter and them all, " Watch and pray 
that ye enter not into temptation." So here, in 
the prayer which He gave His disciples, Jesus 
w r ould have them ask that the heavenly Father 
will spare them all possible temptation, while at 
the same time they pray, " Thy will be done," 
and trust Him in the midst of such temptation 
as, according to His will, cannot be kept away, 
to deliver them " from the evil one." 

When Norman Macleod's wife lay in the de- 
lirium of fever, and all hope of recovery was van- 
ishing, that night, as he wrote it down in his 
diary, witnessed " one of those awful soul strug- 
gles which seem to compress the history of years 
into minutes " ; and this was his prayer : " My 
Father, I lie at Thy feet and desire to be led as a 
child, and to follow Jesus — to die with Him. Yet 
lead me not into deeper trial, lest I perish. Yet, 
Amen — Amen — I trust Thee." Is not this what 
Jesus meant? 



26 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE REACTION OF LOVE 

" There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more." — 
Prov. xi. 24. 

Contextual reading, w. 25-31. 

It is a homely Scotch proverb, no apples are so 
good as those that have been divided. Truly in 
the mathematics of the kingdom of heaven, a half 
may be more than the whole. He who shares his 
life with another to-day will thereby have a 
larger life to share to-morrow — more for others, 
more for himself. It is simply an instance, the 
supreme instance, of the universal law of devel- 
opment through activity. As the musician's 
fingers become deft and nimble through the re- 
active effect of finding and touching the right 
keys at the right time, or the thinker's mind is 
strengthened by each new problem that he mas- 
ters, so the love of God in the heart, which is 
spiritual life, is increased by every exertion and 
expression of it in service. 

Therefore no Christian endeavour is in vain. 
Even though, in any particular case, it should 
fail to produce the direct intended effect, it can- 
not, simply cannot, fail to return and bless the 



THE REACTION OF LOVE 27 

doer. For love, no less truly than muscle or 
mind, grows through exercise. 

Shall the Christian then be ever saying with- 
in himself, " In this service to others I am also 
serving myself — filling my own granary with 
the grain I scatter"? Ordinarily, no more than 
the child at play is, or should be, thinking of the 
good health and increase of strength he is gain- 
ing by the doing of what he likes for its own sake. 
If my love to Thee be pure and true, I will do 
Thy will, Thou Master of my soul, whether any 
benefit accrue to myself or not. For what can be 
better, for its own sake, than the doing of Thy 
will? I would fain help and serve my fellows, 
hoping for nothing again. 

"Not for the sake of gaining aught, 
Not seeking a reward, 
But as Thyself hast loved me, 
ever-loving Lord." 

Yet I thank Thee for the gain. I bless Thee 
for whatever of reward, for whatever of good, 
through this or any other channel, under Thy 
gracious law and providence, flows into my life. 
I need it all. Thou art the giver of it all. 
Through the continual use of it all, may Thy 
kingdom be advanced. 



28 THE LISTENING HEART 



LISTENING AND OBEDIENT 

" What shall I do, Lord? "— Acts xxii. 10. 
Contextual reading, vv. 1-21. 

The world's great leaders are often classified 
as men of thought and men of action. The name 
of the Apostle of the Gentiles must appear in 
both these classes. But even more notable in 
him was the spiritual characteristic of a listen- 
ing obedient heart. As the answer of the child 
Samuel in the temple, " Speak, Lord, for Thy 
servant heareth," was typical of his life through- 
out — a life ever open heavenward to hear the 
Divine speech, and equally ready with unfalter- 
ing fidelity to do it — so with this first recorded 
prayer of Paul. Heretofore he has lived before 
God in all good conscience, and recently as a 
strenuous opponent of the Church of Jesus, 
" persecuted this Way unto the death," but with 
his face toward the rising and not the setting 
sun: now when the Voice from heaven speaks, 
the answer is ready, " What shall I do, Lord? " — 
and from this time on, whether in retirement in 
Arabia or facing the mob in Jerusalem, whether 
weaving tent-cloth or standing in the midst of 
the Areopagus, the attitude of his mind, the 



LISTENING AND OBEDIENT 29 

plan of his life, is absolutely simple. It is to 
hear the voice of God and obey. He was a man 
of reading and meditation, of prayer and study, 
of visions and revelations from the Lord. He 
would thrust aside every obstruction and have 
nothing come between him and the unfolding 
mystery of redeeming love. Yes, but it is equally 
true that he laboured unceasingly, untiringly, 
most abundantly, to put the truth that he re- 
ceived into act and achievement. " And when he 
had seen the vision [of the man of Macedonia] 
straightway we sought to go forth into Mace- 
donia, concluding that God had called us to 
preach the gospel unto them." What he knew, 
though it were only " in part," forthwith in equal 
measure he prophesied. Whatever he was com- 
manded, in any heavenly vision, he did it. 

It was this that made the young Pharisee of 
Tarsus and Jerusalem the chief Apostle of Christ 
and teacher of the Church through the ages and 
generations. It will put any man in the way of 
becoming all that he ought to be or can be. 
The men of vision and fidelity, the men of faith, 
are those who are mightily building the City of 
God on earth. For in them is the way of the 
Spirit. Through them, the listening and obedi- 
ent, shines the light and speaks the voice and 
thrills the power of God Omnipotent. 



30 THE LISTENING HEART 



ALONE BEFORE GOD 

"This same king Ahaz." — II Chron. xxviii. 22. 
Contextual reading, vv. 16-27. 

Nothing is so much a man's own as his charac- 
ter. It is the man himself unconsciously ex- 
pressed in moral choice and habit. What am I? 
Ahaz' likeness is here, on this leaf of holy Scrip- 
ture — where is mine? In the minds of fellow- 
men among whom I am living from day to day? 
Doubtless; but perfectly known to the mind of 
God only. As each of us actually is, in his inner- 
most selfhood, so is he seen of God. 

To the ordinary observer a great company of 
people is simply a multitude, a crowd, a mass: 
he thinks of them and deals with them collect- 
ively. But if he have a personal acquaintance 
or a close friend in the company, it is very dif- 
ferently that he thinks of him. The friend stands 
out distinctly before the face of his friend, with 
his own peculiarities, his own spirit, his own 
interests, his own life — not an indistinguishable 
portion of a mass, but a person. And how much 
more does God, the heavenly Father, know all 
men as individuals. Millions by millions multi- 



ALONE BEFORE GOD 31 

plied connot confuse His thought, or lessen even 
to an infinitesimal degree His perfect knowl- 
edge of each. So therefore each one of us shall 
give account of himself to God. There are 
thoughts and heart-histories that are breathed 
into no human ear. But God has heard them 
all. There are hidden things of motive that have 
never been brought forth into the clear light of 
one's own consciousness. But no veil intervenes 
between either the least or the greatest of them 
and the eye of God. 

How can I stand before the All-knowing and 
the All-holy? Create in me a clean heart, O God. 
What time I am afraid, I will flee unto Thee. 
I plead Thine atoning love and sacrifice in Jesus 
Christ. Look Thou upon my need; for that is 
my prayer. Trembling, I rejoice; for that love 
of Thine, no less than Thine infinite knowledge, 
particularises; and it may be mine; it is mine. 
"Who loved me and gave himself for me" 



32 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE GALL FOB IMMORTALITY 

" Oh, remember how short my time is : 
Tor what vanity hast Thou created all the children of 
men ! " — Psa. Ixzxix. 47. 

Contextual reading, vv. 44-52. 

Yes, it is indeed for vanity, on the supposition 
that this life is all. It is not merely a dream, 
but a discord and dire self-contradiction. We can 
see good reason why a tree should have been 
created, though only for a hundred years ; or the 
plants of the garden for a single summer ; or the 
grass of the field which Jblooms to-day and withers 
to-morrow; or a winged wonder of the insect 
world for an afternoon. These all live the life 
and run the course for which the endowments of 
their nature fit them. But man is enormously 
over-endowed for a mere temporary and earthly 
life. He is allied in his nature with the Eternal, 
akin to the Divine. From childhood he hears 
the voices of eternity in his soul. He knows what 
God is by knowing what he himself is required 
to be. He recognises a law of life that has noth- 
ing to do with time or matter or sense — the in- 
finite law of Duty, the divine law of Love. Shall 



THE CALL FOR IMMORTALITY 33 

all this go for nothing? Shall we be endowed 
for a higher sphere, but intended for only a few 
years' existence in a world of flesh and blood? 
Shall we be commanded to live as immortals, 
and then brought down to death, as mere crea- 
tures of time? Shall we be condemned in con- 
science for acting as a beast or a butterfly, and 
in the same breath told that essentially we are 
no better than they? Shall we walk with God, 
called into conscious and holy fellowship with 
the God of the living, and yet doomed the while 
to a speedy extinction of being? 

The answer of the New Testament is in Him 
who has the words of eternal life. In His words, 
and in Himself. See the Christ living the heav- 
enly life on earth. See His oneness with the 
Father. See the signs that He has wrought, face 
to face with disease and death to destroy them. 
See Him alive from the dead, in personal power 
and glory. Hear His own word : " As the living 
Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, 
so he that eateth me [the Bread of God] he also 
shall live because of me." My soul, here is thy 
problem solved, here is thy quest satisfied, even 
in the Living One, who is the Fulfiller of the 
laws and prophecies both of the ancient inspired 
Scriptures and the more ancient human heart — 
who is thy Brother and thy Lord. 



34 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE SONG OF THE LAW 

" Thy statutes have been my songs 
In the house of my pilgrimage." 

— Psa. cxiz. 54. 
Contextual reading, vv. 49-56. 

At first thought, law might seem a strange sub- 
ject for song. Let the law of the land be ac- 
knowledged, upheld, obeyed. But it has never 
been a chosen theme of lyric poetry. " Sweet 
land of liberty, of thee I sing." But shall its 
statute-books or even its constitution kindle the 
heart into song? Indeed, why not? It is at 
least a supposable case. Suppose an openmind- 
ed, true-hearted patriot, with a great country 
and a good government to live for. Its laws are 
righteous and peace-giving, a source of its pros- 
perity, a guarantee of its freedom, a guardian of 
its glory. May he not rejoice in them? Shall he 
not have them written in his heart, as well as 
codified in books upon which he may lay his 
hand? 

How much more, then, might the Psalmists of 
Israel love the law of Jehovah and make it their 
joy and song. It was Israel's distinction among 



THE SONG OF THE LAW 35 

the peoples of the world, the source of her happi- 
ness, the ground for expectation of a more glori- 
ous future. It was not a series of abstract prin- 
ciples, and much less a collection of arbitrary 
commands, but the moral law, the law of the 
spirit— -a book of life for the nation, the home, 
the individual soul. It was the supreme ex- 
pression of Jehovah's own holy and loving will ; 
and therefore to sing the praises of the law was 
to sing the praises of Jehovah Himself. 

May I never be satisfied, Thou God of truth, 
so long as Thy law is simply written in the 
Scriptures and not also in my heart. How can 
I love truth, which is to love Thee, and find Thy 
will unlovely or obedience an irksome and heart- 
less task? Love feels no load, Love sings at its 
work. Have compassion, I beseech Thee, upon 
my infirmities, and save me from the dominance 
of self, which is the misery of the soul. O that 
a clearer vision of Thy will, which is the ex- 
pression of Thine own nature, the joy of heaven, 
the hope of earth, may attune my everyday life 
into a song. 



36 THE LISTENING HEAET 



THE* TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE 

" Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, 
And the stars are not pure in His sight : 
How much less man, that is a worm ! 
And the son of man, that is a worm ! " 

— Job xxv. 5, 6. 
Contextual reading, the Chapter. 

A friend with whom I was walking in his gar- 
den handed me the fragment of a leaf, on which 
a cabbage worm was hiding himself away in a 
little greenish case of his own manufacture. A 
dull, repulsive worm, he had crawled and eaten 
till satisfied; and had then retired into this tiny 
house of life-in-death. I put it upon the window- 
sill in my room. In a few days there sat beside 
the broken case an exquisite butterfly, with great 
luminous wings, which, while I was looking, 
floated away on the summer air, and alighted 
upon a full-blown rose in a neighbour's yard. So 
much for the capacity of transformation, the 
miracle of predestined attainment. From a root 
of ugliness to a blossom of beauty, from crawling 
to flight, from the thraldom of the cabbage leaf 
to the freedom of the realm of air ! 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE 37 

The mind is oppressed with a sense of painful 
disheartenment at the thought of the insignifi- 
cance of man. Petty, homely, grovelling, sinful — 
" man that is a worm." If even the stainless 
glory of the stars is unclean before the Infinite 
Purity, how much more this writhing lump of 
flesh. 

But let me pause a moment. Perhaps there is 
a deeper truth to be learned. This at least is 
true : I can feel the pain, the disheartenment, the 
apparent unfitness and contradiction, and that 
itself betokens the possibility of a higher devel- 
opment. Pain is a sign of life : the dead do not 
feel. Let the ancient seer call me a worm, then, 
if he will. I will not reject his witness. But the 
very sense of humiliation which it gives is a pro- 
phetic pain. It tells of a nature whose home is 
not in the dust, of a life that may be lived above 
the stars. The man whom I meet, the man that 
I am, is potentially a son of God reigning in the 
light and glory of his Father's kingdom. " Man 
that is a worm " — " Beloved, now are we children 
of God ... we know that if He shall be mani- 
fested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see 
Him even as He is." " Man that is a worm " — 
" These that are arrayed in the white robes, who 
are they, and whence came they? " 



38 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE POWER OF LIFE 

" Alienated from the life of God."— Eph. iv. 18. 
Contextual reading, vv. 17-24. 

Here lies a block of the finest marble, and half 
covered with dust by its side, a small brown seed 
apparently quite too insignificant for notice. 
But in fact the seed is, beyond comparison, the 
more interesting and significant of the two. Sub- 
stitute a diamond, such in size and beauty as 
never was, for the marble ; and the same is true. 
The marble, the diamond, though a very house 
of the light, though practically imperishable, is 
cold, fixed, changeless. Let a thousand years 
pass; it will be nothing more, can do nothing 
more, than at this moment. But the seed can 
grow. Grant that this is the only quality worth 
mentioning that it possesses; this of itself is 
enough to class it with the mightiest and most 
beneficent forces on earth. See it lifting its head 
far above the lifeless stone at its side, a fruit- 
bearing tree that may reproduce itself ten thou- 
sand fold, the world over. And one word ex- 
presses it all — the seed is alive. 

The life of God in the soul of man — what is 



THE POWER OF LIFE 39 

its possible and intended outcome? Increase of 
knowledge, righteousness, energy, influence, even 
unto eternity. The limit is not imaginable. Be- 
cause of his wonderful birth, the people asked 
concerning the child John the son of Zacharias, 
"What then shall the child be?" But more 
wonderful and more significant is the birth from 
above of any soul. Because it is a communica- 
tion of the Divine life, whose possibilities of 
growth and fruitage only the eye of Omniscience 
can measure. 

What manner of man may I be? If not alien- 
ated from the life of God, what is it possible for 
me to become? O Thou who art the God not of 
the dead, but of the living, I rest in Thy Almighty 
love. I am weak and ignorant, I cannot bear the 
vision of an infinite possibility. But do Thou 
lead me on. 

" I do not ask to see 
The distant scene: one step enough for me." 

Not as an alien, but as a child in my Father's 
house, teachable, trustful, faithful, let me grow 
in wisdom and in grace; and the boundless 
Future — it is in Thy holy keeping. 



40 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE INNERMOST VOICE OF GOD 

" These, not having the law, are the law unto them- 
selves, in that they show the work of the law written in 
their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith." 
— Bom. ii. 14, 15. 

Contextual reading, vv. 11-16. 

It is the conscience, not of the Christian, nor of 
the son of Abraham, nor of an Immanuel Kant 
overwhelmed with awe at the contemplation of 
" the moral law within," of which the Apostle to 
the Gentiles is speaking; but the conscience of 
the Gentile, the pagan. It is possible, he says, 
for those who have not the law of God as the 
Church under either the Old or the New Cove- 
nant has received it, to hear a witness within tes- 
tifying to righteousness and iniquity, and to show 
in spirit and conduct the works of the law done 
from the heart. 

There is a voice of God, then, that may be 
heeded or unheeded, obeyed or disobeyed, in every 
human soul. Even among peoples to whom Sinai 
is unknown, this voice is heard, and has been 
heard from the beginning of the world. For it 
is no other than God Himself that speaks in the 
intuitions and authority of conscience. Thou 



THE INNEEMOST VOICE OF GOD 41 

shalt do right has all the sanctity, because all 
the reality, of an immediate Divine command. 
Listen, O soul of man, to the inner word which 
declares that reverence and truth and honesty 
and love are right, and that profanity and false- 
hood and fraud and hatred are wrong, and at the 
same time, bidding thee avoid the wrong and do 
the right, approves or condemns thine act; and 
thou art listening to the very voice of the God 
after whose likeness thine own moral nature 
was created. 

But the witness of conscience may be so dis- 
regarded as to grow fainter and fainter on the 
ear, or practically cease to be heard. In pagan 
lands? Let me not be thinking of them now, nor 
of this enlightened Christian land, but of my 
own personal life. Save me, Thou God of truth, 
from paltering with conscience. May I not sub- 
stitute for it the opinions and practices of friends, 
even the most cultured or gifted or attractive. 
May I not yield to the profane tyranny of " What 
other people say and do " — thus turning my ears 
away from Thine own voice within. May not the 
will of the flesh, nor the vagaries of an unchast- 
ened imagination, nor the customs of society, but 
Thy will, my Father, be the law of my life. In 
little things, if such there be, as in great, may I 
hear Thee and obey. 



42 THE LISTENING HEART 



GRATITUDE AS REWARD 

" Give, and it shall be given unto you ; good measure, 
pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they 
give into your bosom." — Luke vi. 38. 

Contextual reading, vv. 27-38. 

" They shall give." Who shall thus give in re- 
turn for what has been given? I take it to mean, 
first of all, one's fellow-men. As a man speaks, 
so will he be spoken to; as he treats others, so 
will he be treated by them; as he gives, so will 
the receiver give back. And not in some thin, 
ghostly manner, as a graphophone, or as " Echo 
answering in her sleep from hollow fields," but 
genuinely, generously, good and overflowing 
measure. True, the law is not here universal. 
Like every other rule of free personal conduct, 
it has numerous exceptions. Nevertheless it is 
a real law of human life — the principle of re- 
sponsiveness to the touch of a fellow-man — ob- 
servance of which will be followed by its proper 
reward. 

What " shall they give "? For one thing, grati- 
tude. I have been tempted to complain, this is 
an ungrateful world; the proverb seems true, 



GEATITUDE AS REWARD 43 

" Eaten bread is soon forgotten." But let me 
stop and ask of the man within my own breast. 
Am I an ungrateful wretch, treating one who has 
made sacrifice to befriend me, with unkindness 
or indifference? If not, my complaint is hushed, 
unless, indeed, I be a Pharisee, proclaiming, " I 
am not as other men are." 

Sweet and satisfying is human gratitude. Let 
me rather receive the grateful love of the poor 
and unhappy, who have nothing else to give, than 
all the gifts or plaudits of the favoured sons of 
earth. Here is a grave beside which stands the 
stately memorial marble, and that is all. Here 
is another, to which has found his way a humble 
child of poverty or sorrow, who says amid the 
tears that rise unbidden from the heart, " He 
was my friend." O God, let this poor dust of 
mine lie some day in such a grave. I want the 
love of my neighbour. I want Thy love mediated 
to me through his kind and grateful remem- 
brance. Let me then freely give my life to him 
in Thy name. 



44 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 

" I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therein to 
be content." — Phil. iv. 11. 

Contextual reading, vv. 10-20. 

There is a touch of pathos in the story of the 
philosopher, dying in old age, who turned his 
head to listen to an intelligent conversation, with 
the remark, " I should be happy to die learning 
something." As long as one lives, let him learn. 
But the highest knowledge is such as cannot be 
gathered from any conversation, or any book, or 
in any laboratory. It is entirely consistent with 
literary or historical or scientific pursuits, but 
equally independent of them. The schools 
neither teach it nor shut it out. " Learn to do 
well" It is a knowledge through the education 
of the spirit, not of the intellect. 

An example is given in this letter of a prisoner 
of Jesus Christ. " I have learned " — the secret 
of Christian contentment. Accordingly, to the 
courteous acknowledgment of their kind gifts 
which Paul writes to his friends in Philippi, we 
see him add that, even lacking these, he should 
not have been unhappy or dissatisfied. He could 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION 45 

both thankfully possess and cheerfully do with- 
out. 

" I have learned " — where? The answer is un- 
equivocal. It was not by being with the stoics, 
determined upon self-mastery, that this independ- 
ence of outward things was attained ; but in the 
school of Christ — by being with Him. " I can 
do all things in Him that strengthened me." 

" I have learned " — how? Not in the way of 
dreaming, nor of permitting sacred formulas to 
float through the brain. It was in the way of 
discipline. To know Christ thus involved a fel- 
lowship in Christ's sufferings. It meant Lystra 
with its stoning, and Ephesus with its wild 
beasts, and Rome with its prison, as well as 
friends, and freedom, and abundance. For how 
can a man learn to be content in every state, with 
no experience of want and pain? But the cost 
was unworthy of comparison with the excellency 
of the knowledge that came through this Divine 
discipline of life. 

Art thou willing, my soul, to be educated by 
thy Master? Wilt thou really follow Him? It 
may be sometimes through the path of pain, but 
it will always be into the path of peace. 



46 THE LISTENING HEART 



THANKFUL— FOR WHAT? 

" In everything give thanks." — I Thess. v. 18. 
Contextual reading, vv. 14-24. 

Because in everything is the presence and the 
providence of God. Here is the all-sufficing 
truth. Is it to Him that in everything we are 
to be thankful? It is also for Him. Sometimes, 
I fear, men think of God as only entering their 
lives at certain chief turning-points or crises. A 
severe illness bears us down into the very 
shadows of death, but we are raised up and, be- 
hold, the old familiar world around us is a new, 
bright world; a threatened bereavement op- 
presses the heart nigh unto breaking, but the 
stroke is withheld, and the dear light of our 
home shines on. Then is the soul brought con- 
sciously near to the great realities. We had al- 
most looked upon the Unseen. So we kneel down 
in solemn gladness before God and acknowledge 
His hand of delivering mercy in our lives. 

But is He not the unceasing Caretaker? By 
whose hand am I fed in body and in spirit, or 
guided in the way wherein I ought to walk, or 
defended from numberless perils, this very pass- 



THANKFUL— FOR WHAT? 47 

ing moment? I have read of Chrysostom, him 
of the Golden Mouth, in exile for conscience' 
sake in a far wild country, dying from hardship 
and exposure, with the doxology on his lips, 
" God be praised for everything." I have seen a 
strong-bodied and manly countryman standing 
at a well and thanking God for the gift of cold 
water. "All things are of God, who reconciled 
us to Himself through Christ " : therefore in all 
things it is fitting to give thanks. 

But suppose the stroke of bereavement should 
fall, and the light of my home go out in darkness : 
shall it then be a time of murmuring or still a 
time of trustfulness and praise? Suppose I am 
brought down into the shadows of death, and am 
not raised up, but the shadows deepen into dark- 
ness: shall there be no doxology on my lips for 
the love that has followed me all my days and 
will not let go in death? In death? In that 
wisely-sent darkness that shrouds from mortal 
eyes the gates of day. 



48 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE GOD OF TEE IMPERFECT 

" For she said within herself, If I do but touch His 
garment, I shall be made whole " — Matt, ix. 21. 

Contextual reading, vv. 18-22. 

The woman's unspoken prayer was genuine. 
She had made her way to Jesus and put forth 
such faith in Him as she could. But it w T as an 
unenlightened faith. To trust to the touching 
of the Lord's garments, as if healing virtue were 
in the mere physical contact — that was a crude 
superstition. Yet it was not in vain. For Jesus 
answered the cry of the heart, even thus mis- 
takenly expressed — not, as we know full well, 
because of its superstitious element, but in spite 
thereof. " Daughter, be of good cheer, thy faith 
hath made thee whole." The heart of the Sav- 
iour was touched no less really than the fringe 
of his robe; and out of that answering infinite 
love the power went forth to heal. 

Let me know the truth. I would fain be free 
from all superstition and from all hurtful error. 
Unwillingly would I rest in any ignorance or 
false view as to the way of access to God and 
communion with Him. Error, whether culpa- 



THE GOD OF THE IMPERFECT 49 

ble or innocent, is limitation, a fetter upon the 
soul. " The truth shall make you free." Break 
Thou my chains, O God of truth. Yet I do thank 
Thee that Thou dost not wait in the putting 
forth of Thy power to save, till the believing 
heart is in all things doctrinally sound or ethic- 
ally enlightened. If such were Thy will, who 
could ever hope that his prayer would be heard? 
Thou art the God of the imperfect. Thou look- 
est at the heart — at the need, the inward striving, 
the aspiration, the budding affection, the aim. 
Many are the mistakes and ignorances of Thy 
children, and great are the losses thereby in- 
curred ; nevertheless Thy word of grace and truth 
remains, " According to " — not thy past life or 
thy knowledge — " according to thy faith, be it 
unto thee." According to the openness of our 
hearts toward Thee, wilt Thou look upon us in 
the forgiveness of iniquities and the healing of 
all diseases. Do Thou with Thy quickening 
touch make us alive to Thee. Do Thou purify 
and enlarge our faith. Do Thou speak some word 
of peace. 



50 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILDHOOD 

" See that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for 
I say unto yon that in heaven their angels do always 
behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." — Matt. 
xviii. 10. 

Contextual reading, vv. 12-14. 

Not in this world can we do more than just be- 
gin to know and appreciate what a little child 
is worth. Only in the light of heaven does its 
immortal greatness appear. It is honoured and 
cared for there. The children's angels are among 
the angels of the Presence, who stand before 
the face of the heavenly Father. To be en- 
trusted with ministration to the little ones of 
earth, to come forth and guard them from physi- 
cal dangers, to keep them from the power of 
temptation, to shed some ray of light upon the 
dawning moral consciousness, to be their unseen 
care-takers even as friends in flesh and blood are 
always about them? Lord of angels and of men, 
Thou knowest what is their ministry. If it were 
well that we should know it, Thou wouldst have 
told us. 

But this would I learn with ever-deepening 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILDHOOD 51 

insight — the significance of childhood, the pos- 
sibilities of life's morning, the value of a soul. 
I would learn it from personal consciousness, 
from facts of observation, from the teaching of 
Jesus. I would learn it from the Babe of Beth- 
lehem. Let me not despise the form in which 
the Lord of glory entered the life of humanity. 
Let me not think it possible to care too wisely or 
lovingly for those who, here in the home, in the 
Sunday school, on the street, are at the momen- 
tous outset of an endless career. When the tender 
and inimitable grace, the trustful wonderment, 
the sweetly broken accents of thought and speech, 
when these pass — what will develop? And in 
the long years to come — what will follow? 
Shall the " walls of the prison-house close 
round," or the heavenly vision shine on ever 
brighter with its ensphering light? And beyond 
the veil — ? To think of that, and to guide a 
little child safely in the path of life is a work 
to fill the heart of the angels of the Father. Is 
it not infinitely worthy of any man's ministry? 



52 THE LISTENING HEART 



WHO CAN HEAR IT? 

" Many therefore of His disciples, when they heard 
this, said, This is a hard saying ; who can hear it ? " — 
John vi. 60. 

Contextual reading, vv. 54-66. 

It was only pleasant to follow Jesus as the 
people had recently been doing. It cost nothing. 
On the contrary, they had had their sick healed 
without the payment of physicians' fees, and 
their own hunger satisfied, at least on one occa- 
sion, with bread of Jesus' providing. On the 
green and sunny plain, or across the bright 
waves, or through the cheerful streets — to follow 
Jesus there, while he taught many things and 
did many merciful deeds, was no hardship. But 
when He began to show them that this was not 
to be His disciples indeed, they were displeased. 
When He declared that He Himself, and not His 
material gifts, was the Bread of God, which 
must be received into the conscience and heart, 
they stumbled at such teaching, and with the 
murmur on their lips, " This is a hard saying, 
who can hear it? " — went away. 

But what am I, coldly to condemn these men 



WHO CAN HEAR IT? 53 

of old? Rather let me be careful not myself to 
pick and choose among the teachings or the pre- 
cepts of the Master, What is the saying that is 
hard for me to hear? That I must love my neigh- 
bour as myself? that I must even love my enemy? 
that I must be satisfied with no lower ideal than 
to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect? 
that I must cut off the right arm and pluck out 
the right eye to escape the fire of hell? that for 
every idle word that men speak they shall give 
account in the day of judgment? that the for- 
saking of all that one hath is the path of disci- 
pleship? that my life must be a daily commu- 
nion with the Highest? My merciful Master, let 
me not stumble at these sayings of thine. They 
are words of eternal life. Put the spirit of them 
into my heart. Make me to be " of the truth " ; 
then shall Thy words not offend, but quicken, 
and whatsoever Thou shalt speak, I will " hear 
Thy voice." Let me learn better and better the 
meaning of Thy words, not in the letter, but in the 
spirit. Then let me press upward to their heav- 
enly height, and not try complainingly to win 
them down to my own poor plane of vision and 
deed. 



54 THE LISTENING HEAET 



A LITTLE WHILE AND FOREVER 

" A little while, and ye behold me no more ; and again 
a little while, and ye shall see me." — John xvi. 16. 

" Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea 
and forever." — Heb. xiii. 8. 

Contextual reading, John xvi. 17-22. 

Life is largely made up of meetings and part- 
ings. Of its most brilliant joys, and thank God, 
of its sorrows, and disappointments, and bitter 
anguish, the word is, This also is but for a little 
while. No two days are alike : no departed day 
ever returns. A company of friends spend the 
evening pleasantly together; and at its close, as 
they separate to go their several ways, someone 
asks, " When shall we all have just such an 
evening together again? " Never, it will never 
be. Such repetition is not in the line of God's 
ordering of the world. Variety, transiency, 
change, development, the new displacing the old 
— that is the Divine plan of human life. 

Even the incarnate Son of God could remain 
on earth only for a little while. No wonder the 
disciples did not understand it. That He should 
be taken away from them seemed impossible. 



A LITTLE WHILE AND FOEEVER 55 

It would be a work of violence ; it would contra- 
dict all that they had felt or seen of the fitness 
of things. Surely that could not be the will of 
God. " What is this that He saith unto us? " 

I bless thee, O Christ, for the light that has 
fallen upon this word of thine. Thou art leading 
us on from the transient to the eternal. It was 
only a little while that the disciples saw Thee 
in the flesh ; it was only a little while that their 
eyes were darkened by the Cross so that they 
could hardly see Thee at all. But then Thou 
didst come again and abide. It is now no longer 
" a little while " with Thee and those whom Thou 
callest friends. It is forever. Thou dost bring 
eternity into time. Closer to Thee, closer to 
Thee — this is Thy life-plan for those who love 
Thee, as the fleeting years go by. The most real 
treasures of life do not pass away. It is the 
outward that is temporary; the unseen, the 
essential, abides; and Thou, O Christ, art the 
ever-present and eternal Friend. 

Nor is this all. The transient also is our very 
own. It enters into our character, it works for 
our good, it will meet us in higher forms here- 
after. Whatever we do or suffer or enjoy in Thy 
name, Thou everlasting Christ, it makes for the 
abiding wealth of the soul. 



56 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE 'ASSURANCE OF SONSEIP 

" The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, 
that we are children of God." — Bom. viii. 16. 

Contextual reading, vv. 12-17. 

Surely it is of the deep things of God and the 
human soul that such words are spoken. To 
know one's self to be a child of God ! For this 
sonship is here declared as an experience as well 
as a fact. It is said to be testified to within — 
by God's Spirit and our own together. 

What then is the experience of sonship to God? 
Let us reverently try to trace it back to its begin- 
nings, in a clearly-marked instance. Here is a 
man who lives in habitual sin and unbelief. 
How does he think of God? Simply as the 
Almighty, the Creator, the Great Master. He 
does not know the filial feeling toward his Maker. 
But when in Christ such a man is forgiven and 
saved from sin and unbelief, he does begin to 
know this feeling. There is a sense of nearness 
to God, of trust, of reverent love, of converse ; and 
when Jesus bids him in praying say, " Our 
Father," the name seems not unfitting upon his 
lips. He has a filial feeling now, a sense of son- 



THE ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 57 

ship to God. Is not this the testimony of his own 
spirit that he is a child of God? But whence 
came it? who awakened it in his spirit? It is not 
of his own origination. It was awakened, it was 
inspired, by the Spirit of God. That Spirit within 
enables him to say " Our Father " ; and so the 
testimony is that of God's Spirit together with 
his own. It is that of God's Spirit in his own. 
We dare believe it. Yet, let me confess, there 
was a time when I was greatly troubled touching 
this assurance of sonship. I wanted to enjoy it 
in an unmistakable form which I myself had 
chosen — to have it mathematically demonstrated, 
or to be caught up into a third heaven of illumina- 
tion, so that with a certitude that admitted of no 
degrees, but was simply absolute, I could say, " I 
know myself to be a child of God." Such an 
ecstasy was never given in answer to my prayer. 
I thank Thee, Spirit of Christ, for Thine own bet- 
ter teaching. Create in me the filial feeling of 
love and trust toward the Father in heaven. It 
will deepen with all faithfulness in doing the 
heavenly Father's will ; and it will be Thy voice 
in the voice of my own spirit witnessing that I 
am God's child. 



58 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE INEFFABLE NAME 

"I made known unto them Thy name, and will make 
it known." — John xvii. 26. 

Contextual reading, vv. 20-26. 

We cannot doubt what that Name was. 
" Neither doth any know the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to 
reveal Him." Had the name never been made 
known before? No, not made known. It had 
been implied, or suggested, or uttered in broken 
accents by psalmists and prophets of old. But 
in Jesus the Son of God it found utterance, clear, 
full, perfect, beyond all prophetic thought or an- 
ticipation. 

But here is another word — I "will make it 
known." On the eve of the crucifixion, then, the 
revelation was not yet completed. The heavenly 
Father was to be better known than even the 
most enlightened of the Twelve had as yet known 
Him. And Jesus fulfilled His promise. Pente- 
cost, with the Apostolic age which followed, was 
in fulfilment of it. When, through his glorifica- 
tion, the Spirit came in fulness of light and 
power, the name of God as Father was more ef- 



THE INEFFABLE NAME 59 

fectually declared than in the words of Jesus 
himself before He went away. Indeed, the word 
is still, " I will make it known." The promise is 
in process of fulfilment through the Christian 
ages. Has there not been a marked fulfilment of 
it in our own age? 

" I will make it known " — to each believing 
soul? Undoubtedly that Name is a personal and 
perpetual revelation to each one. The Christian 
child is taught to utter it from infancy; and if 
there be a true father and mother in the home, 
in them he will learn much of what the Father in 
heaven must be. Said one whose happiness it 
had been to be brought up in such a home: 
" Because my father's love reached out to very 
many, I knew that God loved me. Because my 
father's love reached out to very many, I knew T 
that God loved the whole world." Then, if with 
the swift revolving years the fountain of father- 
hood is unsealed in one's own heart, he will bow 
his knees "unto the Father from whom every 
family in heaven and on earth is named," with a 
new and unexpected sense of what the divine 
fatherhood must mean. So, in all the ways of 
providence and grace, if he follow on to know, 
there will be interpreted to him the ineffable 
Name. 

"And will make it known." 



60 THE LISTENING HEART 



PRAYER AND SERVICE 

" And in the morning, a great while before day, He 
rose up and went out, and departed into a desert place, 
and there prayed. And Simon and they that with him 
followed after Him ; and they found Him, and say unto 
Him, All are seeking Thee/' — Mark i. 35-37. 

Contextual reading, vv. 29-39. 

It was no time, they thought, for one whose 
services as teacher and healer were in such 
demand, to be alone praying. So they broke in 
upon that holy solitude to call their Lord back 
to the eager people. They did not know the vital 
relation of prayer and service. They could not 
understand the closeness of this relation even in 
the life of the sinless Saviour. They failed to 
see that He was receiving in secret strength to 
be spent openly. But " Simon and they that 
were with him " were at this time only beginners 
in the Christian life. Afterward they learned 
many things through discipleship with Christ, 
and in the Interpreter's House, the sphere of the 
Spirit's discovering light. So also may we in 
our lifetime ; and one of these great truths is the 
necessity of prayer to the fulness of spiritual 



PRAYER AND SERVICE 61 

vision and of power to do the work of God. 
When our Lord says to the listening soul to-day, 
" He that would be my disciple, let him follow 
me/' does He mean that the disciple shall follow 
Him in this or that other path but not in the path 
of prayer? Will honesty of intention, with read- 
ing of good books, a clean life, liberality in 
giving, saying prayers, activity in this or that 
line of church work, meet the requirement? One 
had better ask, Will not a child in the home do 
well enough to attend to his various duties, with- 
out caring to seek the presence of his father and 
mother, or to make claim upon their attention 
and their help, or to open his heart to them, or 
to come into contact with their spirit of wisdom, 
love, and parenthood? 

The men of prayer are the men of power. The 
conversation, the act of kindness, the preaching, 
the life, that is imbued with a spirit that comes 
only from the inner chamber of Divine com- 
munion, will communicate the very power of 
God. Let me take time to clothe myself with 
strength for service. Let me not be so unwise 
and so unfllial toward my heavenly Father as to 
grudge the still hour of prayer. 



62 THE LISTENING HEART 



IN THE WORLD 

" And I am no more in the world, and these are in 
the world, and I come to Thee." — John xvii. 11. 

Contextual reading, the Chapter. 

They were not to accompany their Lord 
through the gate of death, which was the 
entrance-way into His glory; nor to pitch their 
tents henceforth upon some mount of transfig- 
uration; nor to flee into the wilderness or shut 
themselves up at home in a cloistered piety. 
" These are in the world " — among their fellows, 
where Jesus had lived, at whose hands and for 
whose sake he was now about to die. They 
needed the world. It was their suitable test and 
discipline. It was the school in which they were 
to be educated in the Christian life for their en- 
trance into glory. And they were needed by the 
world. They must be Jesus' representatives. 
Even greater works than His should they do, by 
the power of the Spirit, as witnesses of His cross 
and resurrection. Day by day they were to shine 
as lights among men, " holding forth the word of 
life." 

So then it is the Christian's calling to live the 



IN THE WORLD 63 

life of a man in the midst of his fellow-men. 
One does not become less human, but more, in 
becoming a disciple of the Son of Man. One's 
dutifulness as a son, kindness as a father, fidelity 
as a husband, patriotism as a citizen, is purified 
and intensified by all that he receives of the mind 
of Christ. To make this world, like heaven, a 
kingdom of God — that is what the Church, and 
every individual Christian, is for. 

But very real is the danger of worldliness. 
My Father, if I love the world, the love of Thee 
is not in me. The lust of the flesh, and the 
lust of the eye, and the vainglory of life — these 
are not of Thee, they come from beneath. Mer- 
cifully save me from their insidious presence. 
Save me from their subtle influence. Save me 
from their corrupting power. I do not have to 
be rich or prominent or applauded, in order to 
be worldly. In the hut as truly as in the man- 
sion, one may kneel at the shrine of the god of 
this world. But it must be that in the mansion 
is the more powerful temptation, the closer beset- 
ting sin. With what difficulty shall they that 
have riches or prominence or applause, keep the 
unspotted garment. May I seek none of these 
things. May Thine approval, my Father, far, 
far outweigh them all. 



64 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE POWER TO BEAR 

" I know . . . thy patience." — Rev. ii. 19. 
Contextual reading, James v. 7-11. 

Shall we call it one of the " minor " graces? 
That seems an unfitting, non-luminous word. 
Patience is self-control, tranquillity, endurance, 
steadfastness in suffering and in all life's long 
endeavour. The architect will not fail to test 
the strength of his materials, and thus to esti- 
mate the power of resistance to pressure, in the 
framework of his building. Otherwise his labour 
may be worse than in vain. Patience is the moral 
power of resistance to pressure, and the lack of 
it in character-building may be fatal. Nor does 
the eye of the Divine Architect fail to note and 
commend this strength of the soul. " I know thy 
patience." 

God Himself has been named " the God of 
patience." Have we imagined that He has noth- 
ing to bear? Not such is the word of revelation. 
The God of the Scriptures is long-suffering. He 
bids all His children cast their burdens upon 
Him, the care-taking Burden-bearer. He is 
grieved with the hardness of their heart. Can 



THE POWER TO BEAR 65 

we think of the groaning and travailing crea- 
tion, of universal and age-long human suffering, 
and above all, of the sins and wickedness of men, 
and have no thought of a burden on the heart of 
the God of love? " O Ephraim, what shall I do 
unto Thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto 
thee? " I do not wonder that Henry Drummond, 
speaking of the life of young men in the cities he 
knew, broke down in anguish of spirit, and ex- 
claimed, " How can God bear it? " Yet He does 
bear it, " slow to anger and abundant in loving 
kindness." And a thousand years are with Him 
as one day. He waits for the seed to grow, for 
the fruit to ripen, for the process of the ages to do 
its work, for the fulness of time to come. 

Thou God of patience, do Thou give something 
of Thy power to wait and to bear. Let not my 
strength be weakness. Let not the house of my 
life, though built upon the true foundation, give 
way before the storm through lack of the energy 
of resistance. Be it far from me to worry, to 
speak pettishly, to give up. In my patience may 
I win my life, possess it, hold it, make it my very 
own. Yea, let me live it unto the end in " the 
kingdom and patience which are in Jesus." 



66 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE FAILURE OF A LIFE 

" Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, He 
taketh it away." — John xv. 2. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-8. 

I have seen a wreck by the seashore. A noble 
ship that once sat as a swan on the waters had 
struck a hidden rock or run aground, and been 
beaten to death by the waves. And there it lay 
on the beach, dismantled, broken, useless, a de- 
serted and pitiable thing. It seemed a picture 
of a lost life. 

But it is not the only picture. The wreck may 
fitly represent the loss of a life through vice or 
crime. But there are other forms of failure, 
other causes of spiritual death. Let us listen, 
though it be with a trembling heart, to this word 
of the Master : " Every branch in me that beareth 
not fruit, He taketh it away." To be in Christ 
and not live the Christ-life, to have a union with 
Him that is nominal only, to be numbered out- 
wardly with His disciples and not show the fruits 
of His Spirit — that is to fail in life. One may 
turn away in self-respect from vice, and shrink 
in horror from crime, and yet not so share the 
mind of Christ as, in the true sense, to live* 



THE FAILURE OF A LIFE 67 

The fruitless branch, as well as the shipwreck, 
is a picture of failure in life. 

It is much that we should make no provision 
for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof, and that 
we should refrain from trespassing upon the 
rights of our neighbour. But it is not enough. 
There are subtler forms of sin that are just as 
certainly destructive of the health of the soul — 
sins of covetousness, self -righteousness, formal- 
ism, fretfulness, unholy ambition. These may 
be indulged while outward respectability is main- 
tained and outward success achieved. But to 
abide in Christ is to share in that spirit of truth, 
righteousness, patience, peace, goodness, love, 
which is in Him, and so to be saved from the 
sins of the spirit as well as from the grosser but 
not worse sins of the flesh. And yet more, it is 
to live among men, like Him, as one that serveth. 
Was He " holy, guileless, undefiled, separated 
from sinners "? Verily, even as God is unde- 
flled. But He was also ceaselessly diligent in 
doing good. Christian goodness is positive, ag- 
gressive. To abide in Christ is to do the will of 
God. 

" He taketh it away," " Apart from me " — this, 
and nothing else is the loss of a life. To abide in 
Christ — this, and nothing else, is to have " fruit 
unto sanctification, and the end eternal life." 



68 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 

" And he went and beheaded him in the prison, and 
brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the damsel ; 
and the damsel gave it to her mother. And when His 
disciples heard thereof, they came and took up his corpse, 
and laid it in a tomb." — Mark vi. 28, 29. 

Contextual reading, vv. 14-29. 

That which had such an ending did not look 
like a successful life. When we remember who 
this young man was, how he had lived, and then 
how and when he died, the first thought is that of 
incompleteness and failure. John was highly 
endowed and thoroughly trained for a great pro- 
phetic ministry. From infancy he had received 
the gifts and yielded to the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit. His youth and early manhood, till the 
age of thirty years, had been spent in retirement. 
Away from the city and all the busy affairs of 
men, he had lived in secluded rural places. 
There, alone with the God of his fathers, he had 
spent the days and nights in meditation and 
prayer. At last the word of God comes to John 
in the wilderness. He goes forth to proclaim it, 
and his voice falls like thunder peals upon the 



THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE 69 

startled consciences of the people. But after a 
few months of activity, he is suddenly arrested, 
imprisoned, beheaded. Thirty years of prepara- 
tion, six months of service — that surely looked 
like failure. It would seem as if the results 
accomplished were incommensurate with the ex- 
penditures made. And one can imagine the 
subtle Tempter whispering to John in prison: 
" They were all in vain, those dreams of a special 
and far-reaching mission ; your life is ending, all 
unfinished and useless." 

But there is another point of view and a higher, 
even as the kingdom of heaven is higher than the 
sense-world. John attained unto a strong and 
holy character — self-denying, courageous, hum- 
ble, devoted to the will of God. Then, too, he 
fulfilled the mission on which he was sent — to 
prepare the way of the Christ. And at the last he 
glorified God by a martyr's death, and bequeathed 
the priceless legacy of a noble example to the 
Christian ages. I would that my life might be 
such a failure. Let its mere circumstances be 
what they may, and let its course be ever so short 
or restricted, to come into harmony with the will 
of God, that is a life's unspeakable success. 



70 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE POWER TO HEAR 

" As He said these things, He cried, He that hath 
ears to hear, let him hear." — Luke viii. 8. 

Contextual reading, vv. 4-7. 

It was the Teacher's call for attention. Even 
to hear with the outward ear it is necessary to 
attend. Many voices are in the air, many words 
are spoken, that are not really heard, because not 
heeded. The man in the pew sits in respectful 
silence while the man in the pulpit is delivering 
the sermon, and fails to catch the articulate 
sounds, because his mind is otherwhere. " I did 
not hear," complains the child. "You did not 
listen," replies the teacher. 

Much more is attention necessary to under- 
stand the truth. 

" Apply thy heart unto instruction, 
And thine ears to the word of knowledge." 

To the drowsy and indifferent the Teacher of 
teachers Himself could impart no true knowledge. 

" Let him hear " — let him attend, give heed, 
listen. But the word is " he that hath ears to 



THE POWER TO HEAR 71 

hear, let him hear." Does not this imply that 
only certain persons have the inner ear and con- 
sequently are able to hear? Does it not mean 
that Jesus knew that as to any others, it was im- 
possible for them to understand His teachings? 
We cannot believe the meaning to be that there 
were those who were destitute of the inborn re- 
ceptive capacity; but that there were those who 
had not so used and improved this capacity as 
to be capable of receiving Jesus' deep spiritual 
sayings. 

I can see certain beauties in the great hymns 
of the Church, and can feel certain harmonies of 
sound when they are sung; but my friend can 
see and hear far more, because his mind and ear 
for sacred song are better cultivated and devel- 
oped. So is it with hearing the words of Jesus, 
or indeed any other " word which proceedeth out 
of the mouth of God." 

Thou God of truth, one may listen indeed, and 
gain great riches, when, through attentiveness 
and obedience to the truth already made known, 
the understanding heart has been enlarged. But 
just as I am, and morning by morning, and day 
by day, I would hearken to Thy voice. For Thou 
speakest evermore in that sacredest of all sanc- 
tuaries, the inmost silence of the spirit, so that 
the willing ear can hear. 



72 THE LISTENING HEAET 



THE BEST OF 'ALL 

" Because Thy loving kindness is better than life 
My lips shall praise Thee." 

— Psa. Ixiii. 3. 
Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

" I would have run," said the child of a patri- 
otic soldier describing the perils of a useless 
battle. " Ah, but there are some things, my son, 
dearer than life," was the father's reply. Duty 
is dearer, love is dearer. At the cost of these, 
no life is worth saving. At the cost of these, to 
live is to die. 

Life, indeed, when stripped of any of its higher 
possessions and joys — knowledge, companion- 
ship, aspiration, service — sinks in the scale. It 
sinks toward the plane of mere existence ; and a 
day of the human is better than a thousand of 
the animal. 

But those elect spirits that climb to the top- 
most heights of blessedness, what is it that they 
obtain? Let us not be misled by a figure. The 
heights of blessedness are in the vale of humility. 
The elect spirits are those that are willing to 
receive as a free gift the incomparable treasure. 



THE BEST OF ALL 73 

" Thy loving kindness " — that is the name by 
which the psalmist calls it in this inspired hymn 
of praise and longing. Here is the Supreme 
Good, which includes all. A great American 
preacher, standing on a river-boat, one inclement 
winter day, had his attention called by a friend 
to a sea-gull flying in the face of the wind. 
" Yes," was the reply, " he is mine." " Yours? " 
" Yes, I am fellow-heir," he said, following with 
his eyes the bird's brave contention, in a tearful 
joy. If I have my friend's love, I have my friend 
himself and whatever he can give. If I have the 
loving kindness of God, I have the highest expres- 
sion of Himself, I have His friendship, I have His 
fatherhood ; and if I am God's child, Himself and 
all that He has are mine. This world of Nature 
— yes, and this equally present world of spirits — 
is the inheritance of His children, who are fellow- 
heirs with their Elder Brother, in whom the 
Father is well pleased. 

" So will I bless Thee while I live : 
I will lift up my hands in Thy name. 
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, 
And my mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips." 



74 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE DECISION OF DOUBT 

" But he that donbteth is condemned if he eat, because 
he eateth not of faith ; and whatsoever is not of faith is 
sin." — Bom. xiv. 23. 

Contextual reading, vv. 14-22. 

" I have been greatly blessed," said Horace 
Bushnell, "in my doubting." Earnestly striv- 
ing and patiently waiting for the truth, that deep 
Christian thinker came to see it more clearly and 
prize it more highly than would otherwise have 
been possible. His creed became his own, not 
another's, a most real and precious possession. 
May not a faithful soul be greatly blessed, like- 
wise, in the mists of doubt that sometimes rest 
on moral questions? It may be that here, as in 
the case of doctrinal truth, our preference would 
be to have everything made perfectly plain, with- 
out the cost of any painful thought on our part. 
But nothing is more certain than that such is not 
the way of God toward His children in this world. 
Nor need we hesitate a moment to believe that 
God's way, with its moral questionings and diffi- 
cult decisions, is best for the perfecting of the 
soul. 



THE DECISION OF DOUBT 75 

The Christians of apostolic days were not 
spared this discipline. Is it right for a Christian 
to eat certain food? was one of the embarrassing 
questions that arose among them. The Apostle, 
deciding the question in the light of the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ, left them entirely free to do 
as they would in such a matter. Nevertheless he 
adds that if anyone's moral judgment is not 
clear as to the propriety of eating this food, he 
must refrain; because the doing of an act of 
whose Tightness the doer is doubtful, when there 
is no doubt as to the Tightness of refraining from 
it, is wrong, and will bring him into condemna- 
tion. For " whatsoever is not of faith " — not of 
belief, conviction, assurance that the Divine will 
does not prohibit the proposed deed — " is sin." 

I would pray for power to refuse to do not 
only that which is unquestionably sinful, but also 
that of whose moral fitness there is any real 
doubt. Have I doubt as to the rightness of in- 
dulgence in this amusement, of reading this 
book, of putting myself under the influence of 
this narcotic, of following this employment, of 
selling these goods, of eating this food? Then 
for me the question is settled. The doubt itself 
has decided, and it forbids the deed. 

" Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our 
hearts to keep this law." 



~> 



76 THE LISTENING HEAET 



TEE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMPERFECT 

" Not that I have already obtained, or am already 
made perfect." — Phil. Hi. 12. 

Contextual reading, vv. 7-21. 

Irrational and unmoral life is satisfied. The 
snail travels as fast as he aspires to travel, and 
his little shell is house enough for him — so there 
is good reason to believe. The mockingbird does 
not forecast and labour that he may learn new 
music, but simply sings the song that sponta- 
neously rises in his throat at the time. They 
have " obtained " ; they have been " made per- 
fects 

I have had no such experience. I seem to 
myself to have been occupied thus far about the 
beginnings of things only — to have hardly begun 
to be. In childhood I expected that I should 
have " obtained " — should have been full-fed 
with the true and beautiful and good, satisfied, 
" made perfect " — before reaching my present 
age. But it has not been so. More than ever, my 
" reach " is beyond my " grasp." 

Thou God and Father of spirits, it is because 
Thou hast set eternity in my heart. Thou hast 



SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMPEKFECT 77 

touched my nature with a yearning sense of the 
immortal. Thou hast fixed no limit to my aspi- 
rations. Thou hast put at my command no 
plummet that can sound the depths of my need, 
no line with which to measure the possibilities 
of a soul. Great is the significance of the con- 
sciously imperfect. To be satisfied and cease to 
strive would be to lose that which has already 
been gained. I thank Thee, God of my life, both 
for that peace of Thine which steadies and 
strengthens the soul in its upward struggle, and 
for the vision of the unattained, which will not 
let it rest in any bower of ease. 

It was the recent New Year testimony of an 
eminent Christian worker : " My motto for years 
has been, ' Dissatisfied always, discouraged 
never/ Dissatisfied, because he who is satisfied 
with his work is tempted to make no further 
effort to improve. Never discouraged, because 
he who gives way to discouragement is already 
defeated." Shall we not take it as a motto for the 
life as well as its work, for the self as well as 
its service? To become and to do, ever going on 
to perfection — it is the Divine law of the spirit- 
ually imperfect, and the promise of a "better 
country, that is, a heavenly." " Wherefore God 
is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; 
for He hath prepared for them a city." 



78 THE LISTENING HEART 



UNRECOGNISED SINS 

" I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing 
against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but He 
that judgeth me is the Lord." — I Cor. iv. 3, 4. 

Contextual reading, Hi. 18 — iv. 5. 

Of all the great Apostle's confessional words, 
I do not know one more searching or serviceful. 
His opponents accused him of fickleness, of fear, 
of unfaithfulness, in his ministry. But his own 
conscience did not confirm the accusation. He 
could not conscientiously say, " I have been un- 
trustworthy among you as a minister of Christ. " 
He must aver concerning this matter, " I know 
nothing against myself." Nevertheless, he adds 
that this freedom from conscious unfaithfulness 
as God's steward does not justify him, because he 
is not a competent judge in his own case: there 
is but one Judge, the Omniscient and All-holy. 
And to His eye faults and sins might appear of 
which Paul himself was unconscious. 

Surely if ever a man had spiritual insight into 
his own nature and the spirit of his own mind, 
this man had. If ever a man could know whether 
he were wholly blameless in moral conduct, we 



UNRECOGNISED SINS 79 

might have expected this man to know it. His 
whole life had been lived as in the immediate 
presence of the God of truth. Did ever a Chris- 
tian receive more fully the revelation of the inner 
life of Jesus Christ? Did ever a soul show a 
keener consciousness of moral evil? " To me 
who would do good, evil is present." Was ever 
a soul delivered from sin with a more manifest 
deliverance? "The law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin 
and of death." Yet he will not say to his fault- 
finding critics, " I am blameless, I am justified." 

It is needful to mark the difference between " I 
know of none " and " I know that there is none." 
For a sentinel to say " I see no enemy lurking 
about the camp," or a critic, " I see no error in 
this book," or an able-bodied man, " I am con- 
scious of no symptoms of disease," does not jus- 
tify him in the assertion that there is no enemy, 
no error, no disease. In like manner, for a 
Christian to say, " I am conscious of no sin," 
does not justify him in an assertion of sinless- 
ness. 

Search me, Lord, with this lighted lamp of 
Thy word. To feel nothing in the heart con- 
trary to Christian love is not to have been made 
perfect in love. The All-seeing and All-holy is 
Judge, not I. 



80 THE LISTENING HEART 



WHAT IS IT TO ENOW THE LORD? 

"Was not this to know me? saith Jehovah" — Jer. 
xxii. 16. 

Contextual reading, vv. 13-17. 

Josiah's reign had been made illustrious by the 
destruction of idol-worship, the finding and read- 
ing of the Book of the Law, and the celebration 
of the Passover with great munificence. But it 
is not with these things that this question of 
Jehovah — which indeed is the strongest of af- 
firmations — is concerned. It is with the king's 
dealing with the poor of the land. King Josiah 
did " justice and righteousness," " he judged the 
cause of the poor and needy " : " was not this to 
know me, saith Jehovah." 

Knowledge is through experience. I can know 
nothing of an unseen colour, or an unheard 
sound, except in so far as it is like a colour I 
have already seen, or a sound I have already 
heard. I could form no idea of a trait of charac- 
ter that was utterly unlike all that I had expe- 
rienced in myself. Only the good can under- 
stand the good, only the pure the pure, only the 
loving the loving. Therefore one can know God 



WHAT IS IT TO KNOW THE LORD? 81 

only so far as one becomes like Him. " Blessed 
are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God." 

Josiah might have burned to ashes every idol 
in the land, and celebrated the Passover with 
hitherto unimagined wealth of offerings and at- 
tendance of worshippers, yet if he had built his 
house by unrighteousness, the woe of unac- 
quaintance with God would have been resting 
on him. But to be righteous is to be able to 
know the Righteous One. 

Both as individuals and as classes, the piti- 
ably poor are with us still. Their poverty may 
be brought upon them by physical disabilities, 
or by habits of vice ; but it may also be due to the 
industrialism of the time. They are unright- 
eously dealt with. Advantage is taken of their 
weakness and necessity. From childhood they 
are stunted in body and in soul, through the 
oppression of inhuman greed. Shall we pray for 
them — and their oppressors? Here in Thy pres- 
ence, Thou God of the poor and needy, I would 
rather seek to know my own responsibility for 
their sufferings. What am I doing in their be- 
half? O for the heart of a brother, tender, wise, 
strong, dutiful, toward my needy brother-men. 
This would be to know Jehovah, the Righteous 
and Compassionate, the Lord of us all. 



82 THE LISTENING HEART 



TWO VOICES OF GOD 

" Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirl- 
wind." — Job xxxviii. 1. 

" And after the fire, a still small voice. . . . And 
behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What 
doest thou here, Elijah? " — I Kings xix. 12, 13. 

Contextual reading, I Kings xix. 9-18. 

Thus to contending seer and dispirited prophet, 
to each according to his need, the Eternal 
and Most Merciful spoke, in that distant day. 
But with the same two voices, in the terror of 
the tempest and in a " sound of gentle stillness," 
is He not speaking now and always? 

It is so in nature. When the heavens are 
black with clouds, while the thunders peal 
and the lightnings fling forth their messen- 
gers of death, and the storm-wind tramples the 
startled earth, it is an insensitive heart that does 
not hear, awe-stricken, the word of the Father of 
infinite majesty bidding it, " Be still, and know 
that I am God." But it is an equal listlessness 
of spirit that hears no word of God in clouds 
that are bright and peaceful, or in the opening 
buds of spring, or in such " a miracle of design " 
as a simple seashell — 



TWO VOICES OP GOD 83 

" Small, but a work divine, 
Frail, but of force to withstand 
Year after year, the shock 
Of cataract seas." 

It is so in the universal human experience of 
trembling pain and of quiet gladness. The over- 
mastering storm of grief may shut one in with 
God as in some unfamiliar sanctuary, awful yet 
lighted with His glory and opening out upon 
paths of peace. But how much more numerous 
are the sweet and pleasant things of life — the 
faces of friends, the winsomeness of little chil- 
dren, the delights of sense, the mornings and 
evenings, the myriad pleasing conditions, that 
tell, each in its own still small voice, of the ten- 
der, loving presence of the God who made us. 

It is so in the innermost spiritual being, where 
is the throne of conscience and moral love. Here 
they that have sown to the wind reap the whirl- 
wind; and out of it, if they will but hearken, 
speaks the voice of God Himself calling to re- 
pentance. But there is also the gentle everyday 
guidance of the spirit; there is the Light that 
lighteth every man, illuming the soul as swiftly 
yet softly as the light of the morning overspreads 
the earth. 



84 THE LISTENING HEART 



RELIGION AND MORALITY 

"He hath showed thee, man, what is good; and 
what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and 
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " — 
Micah vi. 8. 

Contextual reading, Mat. xxii. 34-40. 

Shall these requirements of the good life be 
taken as standing apart, with no vital intercon- 
nection? Justice and kindness toward fellow- 
men and communion with the Most High — may 
one of these laws of the spirit be obeyed and the 
other disregarded? It may not be. Men, in- 
deed, have often tried to keep them apart; but 
God has joined them together, and the two are 
one. Never shall I render my brother that per- 
fect human justice and kindness which are his 
due, till I see in him, however imperfect or de- 
praved, something of a divine humanity, and am 
thus brought near to the God whom it pleased 
to create man after His own likeness. And never 
shall I be able at the same time to love God and 
wrong my fellow. 

A letter came from a friend which said that 
hereafter the word of Christianity would be " not 



RELIGION AND MORALITY 85 

our Father but our brother" — the religion of 
humanity. Why will men be so unthinking and 
one-sided? For what would be the worth of my 
brother if neither he nor I had a Father in 
heaven? What would become of all spiritual 
values? The child's first and deepest relation 
in the household — yes, and ever the deepest from 
birth to death — is with the father and mother. 
Brotherhood, sisterhood, follows inseparably — 
implying a common parenthood. " The word of 
Christianity must be our brother "; then it must 
be also, and first, our Father; else how could 
brotherhood be? Nay, even a single human soul 
is inconceivable without the Divine Fatherhood ; 
for otherwise how could it have ever risen up in 
personal being, and affirmed itself, Here am I? 

God is unseen, but here is my brother whom I 
see. Do I take advantage of his ignorance in 
trade? do I use him for my purposes instead of 
reverencing him as myself? do I speak to him 
harshly? am I unforgiving and unkind? And 
then do I go kneel down and pray, or stand up 
and sing, " O for a closer walk with God "? I 
do not really mean that prayer ; for God came to 
me and greeted me in my brother, and I refused 
to answer. O God, to walk with men, in the 
name of Thy Son, that would be a closer walk 
with Thee. 



86 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE FIRST AND THE LAST 

" And the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and 
the spirit returneth unto God who gave it." — Ecc. xii, 7. 

Contextual reading, vv. 13, 14. 

There are stories which, once heard, are not 
likely to be forgotten, or to lose their charm. 
One such is that of King Edwin's council, more 
than twelve centuries ago, when the Christian 
missionaries were asking to be received, and one 
of the King's chief men rose and said that this 
life seemed to him like the flight of a sparrow 
through a lighted hall, where warriors and min- 
isters were feasting. A few moments of light 
and safety, and the poor bird is out again in the 
darkness whence it came. There was truth in the 
barbarian's pathetic figure, the same truth as in 
the earlier lament of the cultured Greek : " How 
did I come to be? Whence am I? Wherefore 
did I come? To pass away." And there was 
prayer, the yearning for some such higher truth 
as the pagan faith of the people had not brought 
them, and the missionaries, knocking at their 
doors, had come to teach. For this was the 
teaching: In the darkness, before birth and 



THE FIRST AND THE LAST 87 

after death, is the God of the living. He it is 
who raised us up in personal being to go upon 
the swift journey of life ; He will raise us up out 
of death at its end. Our present temporary 
dwelling-place does not contain Him; eternity 
is His habitation. 

Whence could my intelligence have come save 
from the Eternal Reason? Aspiration, prayer, 
the sense of moral law, holiness, love, the supreme 
fact of personality — could these have arisen 
out of that which is immeasurably lower than 
they? They have come down, like all living 
fountains, from the Heights ; they have come out 
from the Infinite; they are the gifts, I am the 
child, of the Personal Eternal God. O Thou who 
hast made me in Thine own image, and taught 
me to look up out of the dust and say, " Thou art 
my God," none can snatch me out of Thy hand 
or crush my being into nothingness. Not the 
shadow that men call death: for through that 
shadow the personal spirit shall return to its 
Father and God. Let the darkness linger : it is 
only upon our own minds, not upon Him. Hav- 
ing speedily served its purpose, it will vanish, 
and God, who is light, and in whom is no dark- 
ness at all, will remain — and we shall be with 
Him. 



88 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE DIVINE INHERITANCE 

" The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places ; 
Yea, I have a goodly heritage." 

— Psa. xvi. 6. 
Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

When each one's little farm was allotted him 
in Canaan, it was an inalienable heritage. 
Happy the man, in any generation, who found 
himself heir to land whose lines enclosed such 
pleasant places as olive groves, rich pastures, or 
springs of water. But happier far was the writer 
of this Psalm. For his was in a transcendent 
sense a goodly heritage. It was Jehovah Him- 
self. 

" I have said unto Jehovah, Thou art my Lord, 
I have no good beyond Thee. . . . 
Jehovah is the portion of mine inheritance and of 
my cup." 1 

Does it seem a daring figure? It is most 
deeply true. For what is the divinest giving 
known on earth? Not that of gifts, but that of 
the giver himself. And beyond it there is noth- 
ing. This then must illustrate, in its meagre, 



THE DIVINE INHERITANCE 89 

earthly way, the self-giving of God. What is the 
child's heritage from true-hearted parents? It 
is themselves: their life lived over again in the 
child. The Psalmist had not been taught to look 
up to heaven and say, "Our Father"; but the 
truth of sonship to God was half-revealed in this 
truth of the Divine heritage. 

On the lintel of a door in one of the oldest 
houses in Great Britain is the legend : " The prov- 
idence of God is my inheritance." Who it was 
that put such an inscription over the doorway of 
his home, nobody knows. But what was in the 
heart of him who did it, is not difficult to imagine. 
Better than any inherited estate is the lifelong 
experience of God's providing care. But the ex- 
perience of a much more ancient man has put 
upon our lips a larger expression of this truth 
to-day : The God of providence is my inheritance. 

Our God and Father, what words are these 
that I dare to utter? Yet it cannot be real hu- 
mility to disbelieve that which bears the certain 
marks of Thy teaching, and refuse to claim as 
one's own that which Thou hast offered in the 
Scriptures of truth, in Thy Spirit's inspirations, 
in Jesus Thy Son. Let me not despise or refuse 
my birthright. 



90 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE UNSEEN SIGNIFICANCE OF LOVE 

" She hath anointed my body beforehand for the 
burying. And verily I say unto you, Wheresoever the 
gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, 
that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of 
for a memorial of her." — Marie xiv. 8, 9. 

Contextual reading, vv. 3-8. 

The Master whom she would fain honour with 
her cruse of ointment was infinitely more than 
Mary knew. The broken cruse also had a mean- 
ing to Him and a consequence to herself, that 
could in no wise have entered her mind or influ- 
enced her will. Jesus accepted it as an anoint- 
ing for His burial from the cross of Calvary. 
For on the morning of the third day, with their 
offering of spices and ointment in their hands, 

" The other women came too late, 
For He had left the tomb." 

And as to the name of this simple village 
maiden being written in Holy Scripture, and told 
as an example of uncalculating love to the Christ 
wherever in all the world the gospel should be 



UNSEEN SIGNIFICANCE OF LOVE 91 

preached — that could not have been pictured or 
hinted in her farthest-reaching dream. 

What had she to give in honour of her Lord? 
A cruse of precious ointment? That was 
nothing. Had she asked Him beforehand, 
" Shall I give it to the poor, or shall I break it 
over Thy head? " — we could easily suppose Him 
to have bidden her make it a means of ministra- 
tion to the poor. The precious ointment was not 
her real gift : it was only the outward and spon- 
taneous expression of the giving of a life, a 
heart, a self. That is what this woman had to 
give. But the very same have I. And who can 
tell in any case what such an offering may mean? 
What significance may it possess in the eyes of 
all-seeing Love? What use may He have for it 
in His present and coming Kingdom? What 
fruit may it bear, that I cannot even distantly 
imagine, in this wide world and unto the eternal 
ages? My blessed Lord, I will not seek to know. 
I will indulge no vain curiosity. Enough if 
Thou shouldst accept the service. Enough that 
I should be the least in the kingdom of heaven. 
Mercifully accept me, Lord, and let that be my 
eternal joy. For what good can there be or what 
reward beyond Thyself? 



92 THE LISTENING HEART 



ROYAL MANHOOD 

" And I will give him the morning star." — Eev. ii. 28. 
Contextual reading, vv. 18-29. 

It is the prophecy of the coming Day of heaven, 
and as such the prophecy not only of knowledge 
and joy, but also of power and sovereignty. In- 
deed, a star was an ancient symbol of royal 
power. 

" There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, 
And a sceptre shall rise out of Israel." 

Which prediction of the unwilling seer of Pethor 
was more than fulfilled in Him who declared 
from on high, 

" I am the root and the offspring of David, 
The bright, the morning star." 

So here in the word of promise to the church in 
Thyatira : " To him will I give authority over the 
nations . . . and I will give him the morning 
star." 

It is a promise, then, of redeemed and per- 
fected manhood. For the king is the highest man. 
The very word means " the man of his race " — as 



ROYAL MANHOOD 93 

the word " queen " means " the woman." He that 
overcometh shall have dominion; he shall wield 
a sceptre and wear a crown. The meaning can 
only be that he shall be perfected — shall be 
clothed with the power and greatness that he had 
in God's own creative idea of man. Thou 
" crownest him with glory and honour.' ' But sin, 
alas ! enters in to discrown him. Sin steals away 
his strength, dignity, glory. The king has be- 
come a slave. Whoso commits sin is the slave 
of sin. But in Christ is restoration. Salvation 
from sin is salvation into the divine humanity 
revealed in the Son of Man. 

Kingship, sovereignty, power — what then is it? 
First of all, it is self-control. It is to rule one's 
own spirit. It is to be " swift to hear, slow to 
speak, slow to wrath." It is to deny the anarchy 
of independence, and enter into the freedom, 
peace, and power of harmony w T ith the immutable 
law of righteousness. This is to be made a prince 
before God and a son of the Most High. 

My Saviour, only Thou art able to do this 
mighty work. Only at Thy cross may I receive 
a crown. Only through the warfare in which 
Thou art the conquering Leader may I be per- 
fected. And then shall I have Thy leadership 
still in the Eternal Morning. 



94 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE LEADERSHIP OF TEE SPIRIT 

" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit 
saith to the churches." — Rev. ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; Hi. 6, 
13, 22. 

Contextual reading, John xvi. 7-15. 

The Spirit's teaching is not for the churches 
only : it is for all men everywhere. One may well 
speak of the sunlight, filling the dome of heaven 
and overflowing the earth, as universal — not- 
withstanding the fact that there is more of it on 
the mountain summits and the open plains 
than in forest glades or shut-in dwellings or 
ocean depths. So it is, likewise, with the light 
of God, which is the presence of His Spirit, in 
the souls of men. 

But " the churches " can receive more of it 
than can " the world." They can receive more 
of it than could Jesus' disciples themselves before 
His glorification. Was it not His own word at 
the Last Supper, " I have yet many things to say 
unto you, but ye cannot bear them now"? He 
said them afterwards — is He not saying them 
still through the Christian ages? — by the Spirit 
of truth. It could not be that before Jesus' death 



THE LEADERSHIP OF THE SPIRIT 9S 

the Spirit should show, even to the largest- 
hearted disciple, the fulness of Christian truth. 
Because the work of redemption had not yet been 
fully wrought, and so the materials of the Spirit's 
teaching had not yet been fully given. But now, 
with the Cross and the Resurrection to interpret, 
with the whole Christ to reveal unto the believ- 
ing heart, He could indeed be the leader into " all 
the truth." 

Therefore it is now the Spirit's call to the 
churches, " He that hath an ear, let him hear." 
In doctrine, in worship, in work, in polity, in 
missionary enterprise, in all things, let them wel- 
come this Divine leadership. Let the attitude of 
every congregational meeting be that of the up- 
lifted heart, as at Pentecost, awaiting the Spirit's 
light and power. Would we know the truth and 
pursue the right, and wisely determine what the 
Israel of God ought to do? There are means to 
be used, there is the reason and the conscience 
to be followed; but these, O Spirit Divine, are 
not Thyself, and it is only in Thy light that they 
can rightly direct our steps. So would we trust 
ourselves, with incorrupt minds, each for him- 
self, and all with one accord for the Church, to 
Thy leadership, unerring, unwearied, unending. 



96 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE DIVINE COMPANION 

" Noah walked with God." — Gen. vi. 9. 
Contextual reading, Micah vi. 6-13. 

Life is not a couch, nor a wilderness, nor a wind- 
borne wave, but a pathway. It means activity, 
progress, destination. It implies a ivhence and 
a whither. It suggests, moreover, the need of 
guidance and companionship. 

" Noah walked with God." Let not such a 
word from that far-away time fall meaningless 
upon our ears. Often have we prayed, "When 
life's trials are over, take us unto Thyself." 
Let us oftener pray, " In the midst of life's trials, 
take us into conscious companionship with Thee." 

We may not cease to sing the Christian battle- 
song, 

" Fight on, my soul, till death 
Shall bring thee to thy God." 

But neither must we ever forget that God is with 
us in this life, and that we may live in spirit as 
well as in physical fact, very near to Him here. 
When it was said to a dying man, in a present- 
day story, "You will soon be with God," the 



THE DIVINE COMPANION 97 

answer was, " I have been with Him all my life/' 
So there is another song of the soul that has been 
given us to sing: 

* Close to Thee, close to Thee, 
All along my pilgrim journey, 
Saviour, let me walk with Thee." 

"Noah walked with God." We thank Thee, 
Lord, that even in that dark and godless day, 
when Thou wast grieved in Thy heart with a 
world that would none of Thy ways, there were 
those who knew Thee as the ever-present One. 
They had no Scriptures, they had no sacraments, 
they lacked the knowledge, culture, civilisation, 
Christianity, in which, as in an atmosphere 
charged with great ideas and incentives, we have 
lived from the very dawn of life. Yet their 
hearts went a-search for Thee, and Thou wast 
found of them. In the spiritual loneliness of life 
they felt the touch of a heavenly Hand; and so 
they had power to walk life's pathway humbly, 
reverently, hopefully, with Thee. May we listen 
to Thy voice, and Tell Thee all that is in our 
hearts, as did these ancient sons of Thine. So, 
in this holy converse, will Thy presence become 
a conscious reality. 



98 THE LISTENING HEART 



WHOM SHALL WE TRUST? 

" And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith 
in God/'— Mark xi, 22. 

Contextual reading, vv. 15-26. 

" Have faith " — which means not only to be- 
lieve, but to believe in. To believe a person is 
to accept his word as true; to believe in a per- 
son is to accept him as true. We believe when 
we can say, " He will not intentionally deceive 
me " ; we believe in when we can say, " He will 
not fail me." The one is a question of truthful- 
ness, which is much; the other a question of 
truth, which is all. 

Moreover, to believe in a person is, under suit- 
able circumstances, to commit one's self to him. 
Is he trustworthy? Then in time of need he will 
be actually trusted. Do we believe in the phy- 
sician? Then in case of sickness we will put 
our own life, or a dearer, into his hands. It is 
not simply a matter of the conviction of the intel- 
lect : it is a repose of the heart and an act of the 
will. Faith in a person is practically trust. 

"Have faith in" — man? It is natural and 
right to do so. Childhood has become proverbial 
for belief and trust, and is therein a fitting type 



WHOM SHALL WE TRUST? 99 

of the Christian spirit. That is a morbid mental 
state in which one threatens to doubt everybody. 
As the book I hold in my hand would, without 
the force of cohesion, fall into a myriad particles, 
so would the unity of society, without mutual 
confidence, fall apart into its multitudinous 
units. A man would meet his fellow only to 
avoid or to use him. 

Nevertheless, one's trust is often misplaced; 
and one's deepest needs cannot be met even 
through the strongest possible faith in the strong- 
est possible man. Is there then a higher, a truer, 
a stronger? Yes, there is an Absolute Truth, an 
Infinite Life, an Omnipotent Friend. 

" Have faith in God" Thou self-existing One, 
Father of spirits, upon Thee would I cast not 
simply my burden, but myself. Thou art ever- 
more the same. 

" Change and decay in all around I see. 
Thou who changest not, abide with me." 

However it may sometimes seem to our dim- 
ness of vision, Thou canst not fail any trusting 
soul. Through Thee we shall be able to remove 
mountains, and nothing shall be impossible to 
the soul that wills to rest in Thine almighty 

will. i nrr 

L Or C, 



100 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE VISION OF NEED 

" There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching 
him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help 
us. . . . 

u And when they had laid many stripes upon them, 
they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep 
them safely." — Acts xvi. 9, 23. 

Contextual reading, vv. 10-22. 

Apparently the two scenes do not fit well to- 
gether — the beckoning hand and the rude arrest, 
the beseeching voice and the Eoman scourge and 
imprisonment. Beading the first passage, one 
would be prepared to find large and eager con- 
gregations awaiting the missionaries over-sea, 
or even a great national conversion. But instead 
of this, the inner prison and the stocks. 

Shall we say, then, that the Man of Macedonia 
represented only a few devout Jewish women, 
like Lydia, whose hearts were quite ready to 
open under the touch of Jesus Christ the Cruci- 
fied? No, not that: he stood for the whole 
of Macedonia, the whole of Greece, the whole 
European continent. But not for the people's 
wishes or likings, not for the things they were 



THE VISION OF NEED 101 

consciously asking. He stood for the spiritual 
necessities of paganism. It was the voice of 
need, not of desire, that cried, " Come over and 
help us." 

The child does not ordinarily beg to be taught 
to read, nor the savage to be civilised, nor the 
slum-dweller to be led into clean and wholesome 
living, nor the careless sinner to be converted. 
But the wise and good will bring them the ap- 
propriate supply, till it awake the sleeping de- 
mand. 

One's needs are more real than one's wishes. 
The need, not the wish, is the permanent and 
constitutional element of the soul. The need is 
the man. 

Let us be content, therefore, that the mission- 
ary vision is not that of actual outstretched 
hands, eager eyes, pleading voices, hungry souls. 
It is the vision of spiritual need. The Christian 
evangelist is a messenger — not a called-one, but 
a sent-one. 

Our Master, let no bearer of Thine evangel 
think it strange when, like Thyself, he must come 
uninvited or unwelcome. 



102 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE APOSTLESHIP OF DISCIPLES 

" And looking up to heaven, He blessed, and brake 
and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples to 
the multitude/' — Mat xiv. 19. 

Contextual reading, vv. 15-21. 

It was what Jesus did continually. The disci- 
ples were intermediaries : he put into their hands 
that which they were to convey to others. That 
was their apostolate. " Freely ye received ; freely 
give." He taught them many things, and His 
word to them was indeed for the sanctiflcation 
of their own souls — " ye are clean because of the 
word which I have spoken unto you " — but also 
through them for the salvation of the world. 

It was to be proclaimed from the housetops. 
Men would not accept this word as universally 
and as hungrily as they ate the loaves in the des- 
ert place. They might even imprison or put to 
death the messengers who brought it. Neverthe- 
less it was needed by them, and so must be offered 
to them. And whosoever does receive it at any 
time in the long succession of Christian disci- 
pleship, shall share it with others. That is the 



THE APOSTLESHIP OF DISCIPLES 103 

law: he shall share the truth of Christ with 
others. 

Give me, O Spirit of Christ, that bread of God, 
lest I perish. But no sooner do I begin to enjoy 
it selfishly, eating my morsel alone, than it turns 
to ashes in my hands. Let me mediate Thy word 
to others. How came it to me, save through the 
mediation of others — of Apostles, prophets, 
teachers, evangelists, preachers, writers, obscure 
and humble men and women, Christian friends 
in Christ that have blessed and glorified my life? 
I also would be a bread-giver from Thy table to 
all who are gathered about Thy gate — not wait- 
ing till they shall ask, for their necessities are 
asking now and evermore. Let me cross the seas, 
if need be, obedient to the vision of the Man of 
Paganism crying " Come over and help us," even 
though it should be to the inner prison and the 
stocks. Through no indifference of mine, may 
any soul perish for lack of knowledge. 



104 THE LISTENING HEART 



WISDOM FROM GOD 

" But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made 
unto us wisdom from God." — I Cor. i. 30. 

Contextual reading, vv. 18-31. 

Not mere knowledge, but knowledge practically 
applied and wrought into a habit of the soul. 

Insatiable is the desire to know. Think of the 
flood of literature pouring forth from the press, 
and the constant observing and experimenting 
that go on everywhere in the civilised world — 
witnesses that as man rises into the realisation 
of himself he is found more and more to be in 
quest of fact and truth. On the tomb of an 
English historian is the inscription, " He died 
learning." 

But knowledge is chiefly to be valued for wis- 
dom's sake. It is good to know, it is better to 
do, it is best of all to be. One will not withhold 
admiration from a De Long perishing in the 
snows of Siberia on a vain search for the North 
Pole ; but a higher approbation is due a Living- 
stone dying, as an undaunted explorer, in the 
heart of Africa, that the blessings of civilisation 
and Christianity may be brought to the habita- 



WISDOM FROM GOD 105 

tions of cruelty. Light is to walk by rather than 
to look at. 

We would know ourselves and our relations 
to the infinite. Does the Almighty care what will 
befal in our experience, and will He help us? 
What is the whence and whither of life? The 
answer is not in the unveiling of ten thousand 
strange and momentous facts which we long to 
perceive, so that we may read nature and the 
soul and the future as an open book. It is in 
Him who was made unto us wisdom from God. 
Knowledge? Yes, such knowledge of the Divine, 
and hence of the human, as could have come from 
no other source. Not in the words of all the 
teachers, nor in the lives of all the saints, is there 
any such revelation of God as in the words, and 
life, and person of Him concerning whom it was 
testified from on high, " This is my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased," and who calmly de- 
clared concerning Himself, " He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father." Neither is there any 
other such disclosure of the depths of human 
sinfulness and the deeper depths of redeeming 
love, as in the Sacrifice of Calvary. 

But it is not to satisfy curiosity. It is to re- 
generate the heart and guide the conduct. That 
Life is our law. Christ is our wisdom from God, 
the Light of the world that we may follow Him. 



106 THE LISTENING HEART 



RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM GOD 

" Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness; for they shall be filled." — Matt. v. 6. 

" But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made 
unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness." — I Cor. 
i. 30. 

Contextual reading, vv. 18-31. 

1)eep in the human heart, under the touch of the 
Holy Spirit, there is a sense of the need of right- 
eousness, and some desire for its fulfilment. 
Few will refuse to acknowledge, however slow to 
obey, the law of Duty, and to confess " I should 
like to be what I ought to be." Blessed are they 
in whom the desire is a real hunger and thirst; 
for they shall receive that which they ask for. 

They shall receive it, not earn it or work it 
out for themselves. They shall be forgiven, not 
forgive their own sins. They shall be born from 
above, not create their own hearts anew. 
" Create in me a clean heart, O God." 

That is not a formal, but a vital word that is 
recorded of the father of the faithful: "And 
he believed in Jehovah; and He reckoned it to 
him for righteousness." Shall we ponder this 
word a moment? My flowers are in a dark room, 



RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM GOD 107 

and with all possible effort, I cannot give them 
health and colour: on the contrary, they are 
ready to die. I will cease such effort, and simply 
throw open the blinds. Instantly enters the sun- 
light, and every drooping leaf and blossom lifts 
its head and begins really to live again. The 
opening of the blinds may be reckoned for life 
to the flowers. I am quite ignorant ; I have tried 
of myself to acquire a certain store of knowledge, 
and cannot. But a teacher is knocking for ad- 
mission: I will open the door. He enters and 
imparts the desired information and culture. 
The opening of the door to the teacher may 
be reckoned for knowledge. I am sick and can- 
not cure myself : I will let the physician have his 
own way with me. I am saved from threaten- 
ing death. Receiving the physician may be reck- 
oned for restored health. Abraham could not 
make himself righteous, but he believed in God 
— opened the door of his heart to Him — and God 
entering in, by the might of His own presence 
and grace made him a righteous man. The open- 
ing of his heart to God was reckoned for right- 
eousness. 

So, likewise, is it to-day, when any heart is 
opened to God in Christ Jesus 



108 THE LISTENING HEAET 



TEE SPIRIT OF HEARING 

" I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard 
behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying, What 
thou seest write in a book and send it to the seven 
churches." — Rev. i. 10, 11. 

Contextual reading, vv. 9-20. 

John had heard that very voice from lips of 
flesh and blood. In his native Galilee, on many 
a gladly solemn day, had Jesus' words, ill under- 
stood but never to be forgotten, fallen upon his 
wondering heart. Now the Voice speaks in other 
tones, which he must be detached from all con- 
sciousness of outward things, in spiritual rapt- 
ure, that he may hear. In this sense he must be 
"in the Spirit"; but it is the same Spirit of 
truth that shall abide with Jesus' disciples ever- 
more, showing them, through the illumining of 
their Lord's own words, the vision of God. 

O that every day of life might be a true Lord's 
day. As by the power of the Eternal Spirit He 
rose from the dead, so may the power of that same 
Spirit quicken our hearts to see that we refuse 
not Him that speaketh. Then even on dreary 
Patmos the Voice may be heard. 



THE SPIRIT OF HEARING 109 

But he who would know the quickening power 
of the Spirit must be willing to live and walk 
therein. To be " in the Spirit " — have we failed 
to learn the meaning of that word for the Chris- 
tian life? It is not a word for dreaming, for say- 
ing formulas of prayer, for feeling the beauty 
and pathos of the gospel. It means to put away 
every evil thing, to be pure in heart, to do the 
truth toward one's brother, to yield one's seli 
up to the will of the holy and ever-present God. 
Thus will ours be indeed the listening mind ; and 
from whatever direction God's voice may come, 
and whether it be as the sound of a trumpet or in 
tones of gentle stillness, we shall hear. Reason- 
ing is good, and scholarship, and the high imag- 
inations of genius, but it is better to be thus im- 
mediately taught of God. Those are "good 
gifts/' this is a "perfect gift"; and all "from 
above." Thou Father of lights, in Thee shall we 
see and hear, and learn what is Thy will. 



110 THE LISTENING HEART 



TRANSFORMATION THROUGH COMPAN- 
IONSHIP 

"Walk with wise men, and thou shalt be wise." — 
Prov. xiii. 20. 

Contextual reading, Marie Hi. 13-19. 

To begin with, one must have something of the 
spirit of wisdom before he will consent to walk 
with wise men. But it may be a mere beginning, 
as a grain of mustard-seed. Left to itself, it 
might soon perish ; but nurtured habitually by the 
greater and gentler wisdom of another, it will 
grow into greatness. Unquestionably we be- 
come likeminded with those of whom we will- 
ingly make companions. Otherwise what par- 
ent would care whether his child's associates 
were good or bad? Think, for example, of an un- 
trained youth brought into association with a 
man of knowledge, culture, experience, noble 
character — say as pupil with teacher and per- 
sonal friend. He does not avoid, but with ad- 
miration and an open mind, seeks his society. 
Sensitively alive to the influence of such a per- 
sonality, he companies with him from day to 
day. The result? That man's spirit will become 



COMPANIONSHIP 111 

his spirit, that man's mind his mind ; that man's 
life will be reproduced in the life of his young 
companion. 

Which things are an allegory, setting forth a 
higher history. To walk with God is to become 
likeminded with Him. And here verily is the 
way of life. It is very simple, and in its sim- 
plicity sublimely significant. Let me think upon 
the name of my heavenly Father. Let me know 
Him as revealed in Jesus, who was His image and 
the very effulgence of His glory in humanity. 
Let me pray to Him, and listen to His words. 
Let me enter into His purpose. What then? 
I shall become pure-minded and pure-willed in 
His holiness, strong in His strength, wise in His 
wisdom. Some lineaments of His image — let me 
dare believe it — will pass into my character and 
be reflected from my daily life. 

Am I willing? Make me willing, Lord, in this 
day of Thy power. Whatever spirit of goodness, 
or love of truth, or willingness to be conformed 
to Thy will, may have already been given, help 
me to obey its impulses and w r alk with Thee. I 
would hide no evil or doubtful secret in my heart, 
but would tell Thee all. Open-hearted to Thee — 
I can ask no larger faith nor any surer pledge of 
the blessed life. 



112 THE LISTENING HEART 



THROUGH TRUTH TO TURITY 

" If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we 
have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus 
His Son cleanseth us from all sin." — / John i. 7. 

Contextual reading, vv. 5-10. 

The Apostle has just said that God Himself is 
" light " — or truth — and that "in Him is no 
darkness at all" — no ignorance or falsity or 
error. Therefore to walk in this light of God, 
which is the Divine truth that shines and searches 
through and through, is to see things as they are. 
It is to have knowledge of spiritual values. But 
if so, it must show men's faults and sins and all 
the unloveliness of their characters to their com- 
panions. Might it not be supposed, then, to tend 
toward separation rather than unity? No, it will 
ensure fellowship one with another. Because it 
will show something of the worth of men in the 
idea and purpose of God, who has said, "Ye 
therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly 
Father is perfect." Is it not revealed in Jesus 
His Son? There is an infinite worth in our na- 
ture, because more and more we may become like 
Jesus. More and more we may grow up into 



THROUGH TRUTH TO PURITY 113 

that ideal humanity, in all its sweetness, purity, 
spirituality, brotherliness, and power, which was 
realised in Him. 

No wonder then that Christianity, while re- 
vealing to men their sinfulness as they had never 
known it before, should at the same time have 
made them honour and love one another as never 
before. When it entered that hard, sad Roman 
world, such a precept as " Honour all men " 
was practically unknown. But the Christian 
looked upon men with other eyes. He saw in 
them accountability, immortality, possible con- 
formity to the image of Christ. And fellow- 
Christians were united in the bond of the new 
commandment, to love one another even as their 
Master and Friend loved them. 

"And the blood of Jesus His Son" — the 
atonement, the sacrifice, the love of the Crucified 
One — " cleanseth us from all sin." For those 
who are of the truth, walking in the light of God, 
hear His voice, and will not say " We have no 
sin," but will make confession unto salvation. 
And those who show forgiveness and love toward 
their brethren, having fellowship one with an- 
other, are open-hearted to receive forgiveness 
and love from God. " If we love one another, 
God abideth in us, and His love is perfected in 
us." 



114 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE 'ALL-INCLUSIVE TREASURE 

" Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, 
to them that have obtained a like precious faith with us 
in the righteousness of our God and the Saviour Jesus 
Christ/'— II Peter i. 1. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-11. 

One might well prefer the loss of all the other 
senses to that of sight. Mysterious and mighty, 
yet simplest of acts, is it to see — much too 
simple for analysis or description. It is merely 
to lift the eyelids — or let them lift themselves — 
those thin curtains of flesh that shut out the 
whole visible glory of the world. And the re- 
sult? The rendering of the seer subject to the in- 
fluence of the object seen. Look at the starry 
heavens : a sense of vastness, of splendour, of awe, 
is awakened in the soul. Look at a flower: an 
image of beauty passes into the mind. Look upon 
the face of a friend : the soul of the friend comes 
forth to meet one's own. The look from within 
is openness to the influence from without. 

Faith is the power to see, apart from the bodily 
eyes. It is a looking upon spiritual realities, and 
above all, upon the face of the one supreme Eeal- 



THE ALL-INCLUSIVE TREASURE 115 

ity, God Himself — "as seeing Him who is in- 
visible." Therefore it lays open the soul to the 
presence and power of God. " Look unto Me 
and be ye saved." Faith in God — " in the right- 
eousness of our God and the Saviour Jesus 
Christ " — is not the doing of any work but the 
simple looking up of the soul> and its subjection, 
in this looking, to the power of God in Jesus 
Christ — to the power of His forgiving love, His 
renewing righteousness, His sanctifying Spirit. 
,Who, then, shall attempt to measure its value? 
A company of friends fell to talking one even- 
ing of the losses they had known in life. One told 
of dear ones of his household that had sailed on 
an ill-fated vessel; another of friends that had 
proved false ; another of vanished wealth ; another 
of the perished hopes of youth. Still another, the 
last of all to speak, said that his sorrow was 
greater than any of theirs. 

- " Sad losses have ye met, 

But mine/' said he, " is heavier yet, 

For a believing heart hath gone from me." 

He had lost his faith in God. And they agreed 
that his was indeed the sorest bereavement of 
all. " Thine, said they, is life's last and heaviest 
loss." 



116 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 

" And having a great Priest over the house of God, 
let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith." — 
Heb. x. 81, 22. 

Contextual reading, vv. 19-25. 

Near to the mercy-seat, and thereby near to one 
another. A father said to his son, on the eve 
of the boy's departure afar from the home of his 
childhood : " On such evenings at such an hour 
I will be looking at yonder moon, and thinking 
of you : do you also be looking upon it, thinking 
of me ; and thus, though so far apart, we shall be 
as it were side by side." There was a lovely ob- 
ject, though hundreds of thousands of miles dis- 
tant yet visible to them both, which, as by agree- 
ment they looked upon it at the same moment, 
might draw them in the thoughts of their hearts 
together. 

It was a beautiful idea ; but most beautiful for 
what it suggests — for its suggestion of the near- 
ness in spirit of those who pray. " Let us draw 
near." In isolation, each for himself, and 
thinking of himself alone? No, but each for 
all, in the spirit of love and forgiveness, say- 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 117 

ing in his prayer, Our Father. " Lord, Thou hast 
been our dwelling-place in all generations." It 
is in that Presence that the sense of a common 
humanity and of a Christian communion is 
kindled and purified. That is the meeting-place 
within the veil, glory-illumined, 

" where spirits blend, 
"Where friend holds fellowship with friend." 

Therefore, from his knees the man of prayer 
will go forth straightway to serve his brother. 

It is a " sweetly solemn thought " which has 
come to us — has it not? — many a time, that we 
are not alone in prayer. In the very same 
moment ten thousand others are kneeling, unseen 
but none the less real, by our side. All have the 
same needs, and are passing through the same 
experiences. They for me, I for them, all for the 
coming of the heavenly Father's kingdom — at the 
one throne of grace we kneel together. May it 
indeed be in a brotherhood of the " true heart " 
and the " fulness of faith " toward Him who dedi- 
cated for us the new and living way. 



118 THE LISTENING HEART 



SONSHIP AND SERVICE 

" Son, go work to-day in the vineyard." — Mat. xxi. 28. 
Contextual reading, vv. 28-32. 

There is another parable of the vineyard, in 
which the labourers were hired in the market- 
place, and were indeed hirelings in spirit. They 
cared nothing for the vineyard or its owner, but 
only for their pay. No wonder, therefore, that, 
although fairly dealt with, they complained at 
their wages, accusing their employer of wrong- 
doing. " Thou hast made him equal with us who 
have borne the heat and burden of the day." 
But here, in to-day's lesson, the case is that of 
father and son. There is no bargain. There is 
neither promise nor payment of wages. The 
father simply bids the son, " Go work." He 
does not even say " in my vineyard," but " in 
the vineyard," — as if it were his son's as well as 
his own. 

The slave serves through dread of the lash, the 
hireling for his daily wage, the son in the spirit 
of love and duty. My soul, with what calling art 
thou called in the vineyard of God — in his 
"field," which is "the world"? Is it not thy 






SONSHIP! AND SERVICE 119 

Father's world, and thy Father's work that is to 
be done therein? He has named thee neither 
" slave " nor " hireling/' but " son." " Make me 
as one of thy hired servants." " But the father 
said to his servants, Bring forth quickly the best 
robe and put it on him. . . . for this my son 
was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and 
is found." Do thou then make answer promptly 
in the spirit of sonship. Take His statutes for 
thy songs. Make the doing of His will thy daily 
food. 

I have read of an imaginative child who said, 
looking at a gorgeous sunset, " I should like to 
help God paint the sky." God does not need 
us for that ; but He does have need of us to help 
save and bless the world, so as to make it a very 
kingdom of heaven. Shall we find such co-work- 
ing with the Divine Worker other than a labour 
of love? Send forth, O God, the Spirit of Thy 
Son into our hearts, crying unto Thee, Father; 
so that we shall be no longer bondservants, but 
sons, and all our service be sweetened and en- 
nobled by the filial motive. 



120 THE LISTENING HEAET 



FREEDOM WITH r JOY 

" But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying 
and singing hymns unto God, and the prisoners were 
listening to them." — Acts xvi. 25. 

Contextual reading, vv. 16-24. 

There is an innate freedom of the will — or 
rather of the man — over which outward circum- 
stances have no power. Said the strong and 
kindly stoic, Epictetus : " The tyrant will bind — 
what? The leg. He will take away — what? 
The head. What then can he not bind and 
take away? The will." But in the jail of 
Philippi is something better than mere freedom 
of choice — sublime though such a fact may 
be; something better than the retreat of the 
oppressed man into the citadel of his own 
power of self-determination, defying his enemy 
to enter; something better than stoic calmness 
and self-control. Here is freedom with a note 
of joy and praise, the freedom of the gladsome 
child in his father's house. The psalmist of the 
Return from the Captivity gratefully records: 
" Then was our mouth filled with laughter and 
our tongue with singing." But here are singing 



FREEDOM WITH JOY 121 

captives — harps in their hands, not on the wil- 
lows. About these two prisoners are the mid- 
night, the stocks, the dampness and foulness and 
all the noisome things of the inner prison; on 
their bodies, the welts and bruises of the Roman 
scourge; and in their hearts — the joy of the 
Lord. Theirs is the enfranchisement of the 
spirit, the freedom of a Christlike love, the 
glorious liberty of the sons of God. It finds ex- 
pression in prayer — as truly as in the Christian 
congregation or alone on the mountain-side or on 
the house-top, they can tell all that is in their 
hearts to Him whose they are and whom they 
serve; in praise — their hearts and even their 
lips are free to sing hymns of thanksgiving for 
unnumbered mercies ; in the exertion of personal 
influence — their pagan fellow-prisoners are list- 
ening to these unwonted sounds of happy Chris- 
tian worship. Think, my soul, of the freedom of 
the City of God. Who can harm the followers of 
that which is good? Who can set limits to the 
spirit of love? Who can enslave a son of God? 
The heavenward way is always and everywhere 
open. The spirit of a good life may pass through 
walls of stone and on unto the ends of the earth 
and through the ages. It is freedom with a song. 



122 THE LISTENING HEAKT 



TEE JUDGMENT OF LOVE 

" So speak ye and so do as men that are to be judged 
by a law of liberty." — James ii. 12. 

Contextual reading, Chap. i. 22-27. 

" A law of liberty " : are there then more than 
one? Yes, there are many. Any law is a law 
of liberty to him who has the impulse in his 
heart to obey it. Such a man does as he pleases, 
and at the same time obeys, because he pleases 
to do the very things which the lawgiver com- 
mands. If not commanded, he would do them. 
If he be at heart an honest man, for example, 
he will obey the law of the land that prohibits 
burglary, or that requires the payment of taxes, 
with entire freedom. He will pursue in such mat- 
ters precisely the course he would pursue if 
there were no law of the land. Similarly if he 
love the things that the law of God requires — if, 
for example, he love reverence and worship and 
truth-telling and righteousness and kindness — 
he will practise these things, not under pressure 
of the penalty for disobedience, but freely from 
the heart. For the law is now to him not con- 
sciously commandments from without; it is the 



THE JUDGMENT OF LOVE 123 

spirit of his own inner life. " Yea, Thy law is 
within my heart." Moreover, to love the law is 
to love God, of whose nature it is the moral ex- 
pression, and to love men, " who are made after 
the likeness of God." Therefore, it is not sim- 
ply the devotion of the heart to the supreme 
principles of truth and right, the passion for 
righteousness, that prompts this Christian obe- 
dience. It is a supreme personal reverence and 
affection. 

Verily love is the law of liberty. And under 
its government the Christian soul is placed. To 
the man who says, " I pay every dollar's worth of 
indebtedness to my neighbour," the word is, Dost 
thou love. To the man wiio has much to say in 
devotional meditation, in prayer, or in preaching 
with tongue or pen, about love to God and man, 
the word is still the same, Dost thou love? By 
this law I am to be judged. Do I obey because 
I may or because I must? Is it in my heart to 
keep the commandments? Is it in me and of 
me, a likemindedness, an affinity, a compelling 
affection, a " law of the spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus? ■" O God, I cannot stand before the judg- 
ment seat of love. Not yet have I been made 
perfect. It is far above me. But do Thou, Lord 
of life, lift up my heart in Thy service, that I 
may go on in this good way. 



124 THE LISTENING HEART 



VOIGEFVL SILENCE 

"Thou hast proved my heart; Thou hast visited me 
in the night." — Psa. xvii. 3. 

Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

It is related of Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, 
that when he was asked in a company where some- 
one had just told of a fearsome adventure, " And 
what is the most awful sight that you have ever 
witnessed? " he replied, with a serious, de- 
votional expression on his face, " The silence of 
an Arctic night." In truth, the night, concealing 
to reveal, "great prophetess of holier worlds," 
is more eloquent in her silence than is the re- 
turning day with the noisy revival of industry 
in the streets. Her great heart seems palpitat- 
ing with a mystery which she would fain dis- 
close, if she might. It is a time — " the peaceful 
evening that brings all home" — for friendship 
and love. It is a time for meditation, for up- 
ward-looking, for hearkening in the hush of 
earth's voices to the deeply whispering voices 
from on high that seem to call, Come up hither. 
But great is the profanation of the night. It 



VOICEFUL SILENCE 125 

is the time of the evil-doer. It has been prosti- 
tuted into a very gateway of hell. Under cover 
of its shadows, the traitor went forth, from the 
light and companionship of the Upper Boom, to 
betray his Lord. Within its enshrouding dark- 
ness, every city of wickedness holds high unholy 
carnival. How can the pure eyes of God behold 
the nightly scene? How can He bear it? Have 
mercy, O God, and save our young men, save us 
all, from the abuse of the night. 

May we have no wish for the darkness to cover 
any path which we purpose to follow. O to 
be children of the light and of the day ! God of 
light, Thou art God of the darkness also, which 
Is Thy pavilion of solemn splendour wherein 
Thou invitest the meditative and listening soul 
to enter, that it may see the shadowing forth of 
Thy glory and be still. 



126 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE BOND OF VERACITY 

" Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth, 
each one with his neighbour ; for we are members one of 
another." — Eph. iv. 25. 

Contextual reading, vv. 17-32. 

Not only in the Church, which was no doubt 
the immediate subject of the Apostle's thought, 
is there an inter-related membership and a 
law of mutual helpfulness; but the same prin- 
ciple appears in all human society. The many 
are one. To live a true human life in isolation 
is as impossible as for a hand or an eye to live 
dissevered from the body. Therefore it is incum- 
bent upon all to avoid the things which tend 
toward division, and to do the things which 
tend toward unity and peace. What things are 
these — justice and kindness? Undoubtedly; and 
it is one of the hopeful signs of our times, that 
this thought is becoming increasingly clear, and 
that the Church is awaking to the duty of the 
regeneration of society. We are members one of 
another — therefore let there be equitable govern- 
ment, industrial freedom, co-operation instead 
of destructive competition, sanitary laws, broth- 



THE BOND OF VERACITY 127 

erly consideration. But such is not the thought 
in this particular passage of the Apostle's teach- 
ing. We are members one of another, he says, 
therefore put mvay falsehood. For truthfulness 
is a necessary bond of society. How should you 
know how to deal with me, or have social inter- 
course with me at all, without some confidence 
in my word? Absolute untruthfulness would be 
the destruction of all friendship and co-opera- 
tion. It would be moral chaos — not a world. 

Whatever it shall cost, may I put away lying, 
and in word and tone and act, speak the truth 
with my neighbour. It does not avail to say, " I 
will deceive him when it will do no harm, or when 
it will accomplish some positive good." For how 
can he know when, in my opinion, such will be 
the result of the deception? and how then can 
he trust me at all? Therefore in whatever meas- 
ure I fail in veracity, I am so far a breaker of 
close-knit bonds and an enemy of society. Spirit 
of truth, make me willing that Thou shouldest 
dwell continually in my heart. Then shall my 
life be true, and my speech veracious. 



128 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE CONTAGION OF JOY 

" And in our comfort we joyed the more exceedingly 
for the joy of Titus, because his spirit hath been 
refreshed by you all." — II Cor. vii. 13. 

Contextual reading, vv. 9-16. 

It is a touching story that is told of Melanchthon, 
who, in a dark hour of the Reformation, hearing 
a child on the streets of Weimar sing Luther's 
Battle-song, said, " Sing on, my little girl, you 
little know whom you comfort." It needed con- 
tact with some great believing man like Luther, 
happy in the simple joy of life, full of the glad- 
ness of faith, absolutely courageous, glorying in 
Christ only, to strengthen the spirit of his less 
hopeful and strong-hearted co-labourer. And the 
fact that on this occasion that spiritual contact 
came through the unconscious ministry of a child, 
made it none the less human, and certainly no 
less divine. 

We speak of a person's " presence." " He has 
a fine presence" — that is to say, an impressive 
appearance and bearing. But the word has 
a larger meaning. One's presence is the spon- 
taneous expression of one's whole inner life. It 



THE CONTAGION OF JOY 129 

constitutes the larger part of his self-revelation. 
It is all about him, like a vision that others see, 
a temperature they feel, an atmosphere they 
breathe, a contagion they catch. Everyone com- 
ing within its little sphere is inescapably affected 
by it — his mental tone either lowered or height- 
ened, either disturbed or tranquilised. Shall it 
then be a vision of the beauty of holiness, or of 
irritability and fretfulness and self-seeking, that 
the observer sees? Shall it be shadows or sun- 
shine into which the friend enters? 

There is a contagion against which I would 
take no precaution. It is the contagion of joy. 
Not the joy of the hypocrite or the worldling, 
but the joy of those whose heart is fully set with- 
in them to do their father's will. Let me there- 
fore seek conpanionship with them. Let me keep 
their company, if possible. I need them. Let me 
catch their spirit. Then may I also become a 
joy-giver — not a burden upon my fellow-Chris- 
tians, not a thorn in their flesh, not a lord of 
their faith, but a helper of their joy. 



130 THE LISTENING HEART 



CHRIST IN THE HOME 

" To-day I must abide at thy house." — Luke xix. 5. 
Contextual reading, vv. 1-10. 

Suppose the Master should come again, as in that 
earlier time, and say some such word to me. 
Suppose that He should even abide at my house 
day by day. I think the cry of Simon Peter 
would rise instinctively to my lips : " Depart 
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." And 
yet let me hope that there would be a real un- 
willingness that the prayer should be answered. 
In the home of a friend I have seen the motto : 
" Christ is the Head of this house, the unseen 
Guest at every meal, the silent Listener to every 
conversation." It is a word that searches me 
through and through. Can my house bear that 
light? It cannot, it cannot. Yet, O Christ, 
whether we will or not, Thou art here. For 
Thou art Lord as well as Friend, and comest 
self-invited. 

I read the gospel story, and am renewed in 
trustfulness and hope. For Thou earnest not to 
condemn the world, but to save the world. Thou 



CHRIST IN THE HOME 131 

didst enter as a guest the homes of all the people, 
of Pharisees and publicans, of thine own friends 
and disciples, with some great blessing to bestow. 
Thou didst rebuke, or convict, or teach, or speak 
the word of peace, according as the need might 
be. And art Thou not now and evermore the 
sanctifier of home-life? Art Thou not the creator 
of Christian homes? Are they not actually what 
they are ideally, little prototypes of the home in 
heaven, so far as Thy word is their law and Thy 
mind their ruling motive? Thou dost transmute 
their common meals into a communion of purity 
and love, and their trivial-seeming tasks into a 
divine service. 

Be Thou, Lord, the Head of this household. 
Save us from all impurity, and self-indulgence, 
and unkindness, and ill temper, and evil speak- 
ing, by the might of Thy Spirit. Make Thy home 
in our home, even in our hearts. Then from the 
joy of Thy presence we may go forth strong and 
courageous for every battle of life. 



132 THE LISTENING HEAET 



TEE RIVER CHEBAR 

" Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the 
fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was 
among the captives by the river Chebar, that the heavens 
were opened and I saw visions of God." — Eze. i. 1. 

Contextual reading, Isa. vi. 1-10. 

Where? Not with Isaiah in the Temple, glory- 
filled, nor with Zacharias burning incense in the 
Holy Place, not in the Lord's land, but hundreds 
of miles away, on the flat, common-place plains 
of Chaldea, by the side of a canal. A psalmist 
among the hills of Hermon, surrounded with 
taunting enemies, debarred from attendance with 
the multitude keeping holyday at the worship of 
Jehovah in Jerusalem, cried out, "When shall 
I come and appear before God?" Here is the 
answer : God is wherever the seeker of Him may 
be. The heavens of revelation are bending over 
Mesopotamia as truly as over Palestine, and may 
be opened above any muddy canal-side, showing 
visions of God. " The whole earth is full of His 
glory." Open our eyes, O Lord, that we may 
see it. 

Where could the need be greater than in the 



THE RIVER CHEBAR 133 

everyday walks of life? For the light from heaven 
makes even the common day glorious. Eternity 
illumines time. It shows the Divine meaning in 
all things — in the work of the hands as well as 
of the heart and the brain, in the stones as well 
as in the stars. It may over-arch the foggy high- 
way with rainbows and kindle the clouds into 
splendour. 

We have been made to be up-lookers, and not in 
vain. From the work-shop, the kitchen, the 
ploughed field, may be seen interpreting and 
transfiguring visions of God. Will they dis- 
qualify us for the daily round of home duties? 
They will fit us the better for them. Looking 
earthward, I cannot know anything as it ought 
to be known, or do anything as it ought to be 
done. It is the unworldly that get the finest 
wealth out of the world, it is the meek that inherit 
the earth, it is the spiritually illumined that see 
their way most clearly among common affairs 
and employments. For which is better to walk 
and work by, sunlight or lamplight? He who 
would pick up a pebble from the roadside, does it 
by the light of the far-away sun. So is the 
simplest everyday work of life to be done in the 
light of heaven. 



134 THE LISTENING HEART 



CONTENT WITH— WHAT? 

" Be ye free from the love of money, content with 
such things as ye have ; for himself hath said, I will in 
no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake 
thee." — Heb. xiii, 5. 

Contextual reading, vv. 6, 20, 21. 

A woodcutter near the roadside. A rich man 
in his coach riding by. Wiping the sweat from 
his face, the woodcutter sighs, " I wish I were 
rich, and could ride." Looking through his 
coach window, the rich man also sighs, 

" I would give all my wealth 
For the strength and the health 
Of the man that is cutting the wood." 

Each mistook the other, and neither was con- 
tented. What would have transfigured the lot of 
them both, was to mark, in the light of Christ, 
the relative values of sense and spirit, and to 
see the glory of God in His world. But in any 
case, better than the anxious or covetous com- 
paring of our own condition with that of our 



CONTENT WITH— WHAT? 135 

neighbour, is the appreciation of it as it is in 
itself. 

" Content with such things as ye have." Lord, 
quicken our hearts with some true sense of the 
magnitude and meaning of the common things 
of life. Let me think upon the first one of them 
that comes to mind — the power of vision. What 
gold can measure its value? Suppose a man to 
quench the light of my eyes in total darkness, and 
then come with money or a mansion or some 
wealthy estate, as a proper equivalent of the glory 
taken away: he is cruelly mocking my sense of 
loss. This is a single example ; but in truth could 
I reckon up all God's good gifts in my life, that 
would fall below a true reckoning of my riches. 
The best would still remain untold. Listen, then, 
my soul, to this greater word, — 

" Content with such things as ye have ; for " — 
what is it that we have? It is God Himself: " I 
will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any 
wise forsake thee." O Thou that speakest thus 
to the trusting soul, give or take away as Thou 
wilt, so Thou Thyself remainest, life's very Well- 
spring and Source, the almighty Friend of the 
soul, the one Giver of all gifts. 



136 THE LISTENING HEAET 



WHOM SHALL WE HEAR? 

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us 
(and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only be- 
gotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." — John 
i. 14. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-13. 

" By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by 
thy words thou shalt be condemned." " If any 
stumble not in word, the same is a perfect man, 
and able to bridle the whole body also." Nothing 
so gives outward reality to the inner life as 
speech. More than any other form of self-ex- 
pression, it is the man himself. If one could hear 
understandingly all that a man utters — excla- 
mations, words, phrases, tones, sentences — pre- 
meditated or impromptu, from day to day, he 
would know the man. 

Hence in the Greek language the same name 
is given to reason and speech, to the inner and the 
outer mental life. And this is the name by 
which the Lord Jesus Christ is here called. He 
is the Logos, the Word, the Divine Reason in the 
act of utterance. 

My heavenly Father, I remember how Thou 



WHOM SHALL WE HEAR? 137 

hast bidden, " Hear ye Him." I remember how 
He Himself has declared, " I am the truth." 
Therefore shall not the listening attitude of the 
soul be that of receptiveness to Christ Himself? 
To receive Him is to receive knowledge, truth, 
wisdom, all words in the one Eternal Word. 

The child lifts up its face to the mother, and 
receives from look and touch and tone, much 
more than the mere words of instruction im- 
part. The mother herself with and in her 
teaching, is far greater than the teaching alone. 
Indeed, in the case of all great teachers, the 
lecture or text-book is not the chief thing. The 
teacher, in his personality and living presence, 
as the truth transfused into a man, suggesting, 
inspiring — that is the most illuminative and life- 
giving lesson. Let us venture to speak thus in 
parables of Christ Himself as present and teach- 
ing in " the words of grace that proceeded out of 
His mouth." It was much to have Him taber- 
nacle among us, in the days of His flesh, and to 
"behold His glory." It is more to have Him 
abide within, ensphering the soul in the light of 
life. 



138 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE GREATER GLORY 

" When, therefore, he heard that he was sick, he abode 
at that time two days in the place where he was." — 
John xi. 6. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-45. 

Why therefore? One might have supposed that 
some such word as nevertheless would have been 
used. Verily, no ; it is the causal connective that 
contains the very heart of the story. It was be- 
cause Jesus loved this household that He stayed 
away when there was sickness in the house. How 
could that be? The Master made it plain when, 
coming a little later, He showed them a greater 
glory than would have been possible before. 
" Said I not unto thee that, if thou believedst, 
thou shouldest see the glory of God? " They 
would have known Him as a healer of sickness ; 
He made Himself known as the Resurrection and 
the Life. 

What are a Christian's unanswered prayers? 
He asked that his friend might be spared severe 
hardship and grief, might realise the dreams of 
his youth, might have his labours crowned with 
success, might be gladdened from day to day by 



THE GREATER GLORY 139 

the smiles of those whom he loved. Instead, 
there was laid upon that dear one the cross of 
pain. But there also entered into his life a peace 
that passeth understanding, a joy that no man 
can take away, a power that is made perfect in 
weakness, a wealth of character that is better 
than any outward prosperity. 

He asked for himself an ecstatic experience. 
He would fain see face to face. He would be 
thrilled with such waves of heavenly light as 
should lift him far above the common earth, and 
make all doubt or misgiving or susceptibility to 
temptation impossible. And no such elation of 
spirit was ever given in answer to the prayer. 
But there did come into his experience an as- 
surance of the fatherhood and providence of God 
in Jesus Christ which he wisely esteems a greater 
glory. 

" Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in 
my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest 
upon me." 

Let me dwell in the house of pain, and the 
steps of the Divine Healer delay, if so be that He 
shall come, as He will come to those who trust 
and wait for Him, in the glory of a larger revela- 
tion and a fuller redemption. 



140 THE LISTENING HEART 



HEREAFTER 

" Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou 
knowest not now ; but thou shalt understand hereafter." 
— John xiii. 7. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-20. 

How long would Simon Peter have to wait for 
the promised light to fall upon this unexpected 
act of Jesus? Hereafter — what did the Teacher 
mean by that word? It was only a few minutes 
till an explanation was made : " I have given you 
an example, that ye also should do as I have done 
to you." It was for example's sake. 

But that was not all. Afterward a further 
explanation was given by the Spirit who came as 
the interpreter of Jesus. Under His teaching, 
Simon Peter could understand still better the 
glory of service, and how it is the very nature 
of God Himself, the heavenly King, to minister 
in love to His children ; and so he could write, in 
his epistle to the " sojourners of the Dispersion," 
" Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, 
to serve one another," and " above all things, 
being fervent in your love among yourselves." 

But still later, in the all-discovering light of 



HEREAFTER 141 



heaven, with what deep and radiant meanings 
must this lowly ministering of his Lord on earth 
have appeared to the understanding of this re- 
deemed disciple. 

Mysteries of nature, mysteries of providence, 
mysteries of grace, mysteries of the life of Jesus 
— I thank Thee, Lord, for the unveiling of them 
even in this life, where it must needs be that we 
know only in part. Many things that once per- 
haps seemed dark, we may understand, if we will. 
For Thou art ever sending forth lifters of the 
veil. Science is from Thee — filling the mind with 
endless delight in the discovery of energies and 
laws. Philosophy is from Thee — daring to look 
down into the depths of being, and at the imma- 
nent Reason and Will in the energy and the law. 
Experience is from Thee — showing the harmony 
in many a seeming contradiction and the gain 
in many a loss. Holy Scripture is from Thee — 
an ever-growing light revealing Thy Saviourhood 
and Fatherhood, making wise unto salvation. 
Above all, the Spirit of truth is in the world, 
taking of the things of Christ and showing them 
unto believing men. 

Still Thou hast many things to say unto us, 
which we cannot now receive. The progress of 
the sons of light in knowledge — can it ever have 
an end? "Thou shalt understand hereafter." 



142 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE ONENESS OF LOVE 

"And behold a Canaanitish woman came out from 
those borders, and cried, saying, Have mercy on me, 
Lord, Thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously 
vexed with a demon." — Matt. xv. 22. 

Contextual reading, vv. 21-28. 

A mother's prayer. And how significant the 
turn of thought in which, unconsciously, it found 
expression. Not, Have mercy on me, I am vexed 
with a demon ; nor, Have mercy on my daughter , 
she is vexed with a demon; but, Have mercy on 
me, my daughter is vexed with a demon. The 
mother-heart counted the daughter's trouble as 
its own. Love, the unifier, had made of them 
twain one soul. Mercy to her daughter was 
mercy to herself. 

Let us read it as a parable of Christ and His 
Church. For, all the might of human love — 
what is it but a sign of the Eternal Love out of 
which it has arisen? " We love " — both God and 
one another — "because He first loved us." In 
the oneness of an infinite, self-giving love, their 
Lord has made His disciples — even the " least " 
of His " brethren" — one with Himself. There- 



THE ONENESS OF LOVE 143 

fore, whatever is done to them, or to any of 
them, is done to Him. 

Now we can understand how the Christ from 
glory, appearing to Saul the persecutor of the 
Church, could say, " Why persecutest thou me?" 
— and how Saul himself, now become " Paul a 
servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, called to be an 
Apostle/' could urge the Christians of Corinth 
not only to follow their own consciences, but also 
to have a tender regard for less enlightened con- 
sciences, with the motive, " Sinning against the 
brethren, and wounding their conscience when 
it is weak, ye sin against Christ " ; and how upon 
the face of every little child that is born into the 
world there falls the light of a love Divine which 
interprets the word, " Whoso shall receive one 
such little child in my name, receiveth me." 

Genesis tells of a Hebrew patriarch who, sit- 
ting in the door of his tent at noon-day, saw an 
opportunity to entertain angels unawares — and 
improved it gladly. The Gospels tell of an in- 
finitely greater opportunity — and it is ours. " I 
was hungry, and ye gave Me to eat." 



144 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE PATIENCE OF SPIRITUAL 
CULTURE 

" And that in the good ground, these are such as in 
an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold 
it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience." — Luke 
viii. 15. 

Contextual reading, vv. 4-14. 

There is need of patience for fruit-bearing. 
Walking in the orchard on a balmy day of spring, 
one exclaims, How quickly the leaves and blos- 
some have put out — like magic ! But think how 
long the trees have been growing and waiting for 
this result, and remember that each unfolding 
bud was formed beneath last summer's sky, and 
carefully folded away against storm and frost 
for the long winter's sleep unto this day. Men 
plant trees, indeed, for the coming years and 
generations. " Behold, the husbandman waiteth 
for the precious fruit of the earth " — even for the 
grain of an annual plant, beset as it is with innu- 
merable evils — " being patient over it." 

The same grace of patience is called for in other 
spheres of life and effort. The beautiful home 
that charms the passer-by was gained by tak- 
ing the familiar path to the place of business, 
and attending there to endless details of work 



PATIENCE OF SPIRITUAL CULTURE 145 

with hand and brain, in the face of draw- 
backs and disappointments, morning by morn- 
ing, day after day, through perhaps twenty or 
twice twenty years of its owner's life. The 
Christian preacher's sermon, whose luminous lan- 
guage seems to fall of itself from his lips, is a 
product, it may be, of an equal period of experi- 
ence and labour. The writer's book, over whose 
pages the mind of the reader may go lilting along 
without effort, was probably planned, written, 
interlined, re-written, revised, written again, 
every sentence scrutinised, in many hours of soli- 
tary thought, through the best years of its 
author's life, and with no certain hope of its suc- 
cess or even of its publication — a work of faith, 
a labour of love, a patience of hope. 

Let me call to mind such facts and apply their 
principle to the spiritual life. So many prayers, 
church-goings, readings of Scripture, meditations, 
forms of devotion, resistances of temptation, at- 
tempts at beneficence; and on the other hand, 
such meagre ripening of character, perfection of 
conduct, triumph of love, power to do good — is 
this my complaint? Then, I have forgotten the 
need of patience. Little by little, under smiling 
or threatening skies, working, waiting, living by 
faith — such are the conditions of the great life- 
processes of spiritual growth and fruitage. 



146 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE FREEDOM OF SONSHIP 

" If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall 
be free indeed." — John viii. 36. 

Contextual reading, vv. 31-35. 

I can think of no such perfect type of freedom 
as that of sonship when both father and son are 
all that their names connote. There is not a 
feather's weight of bondage to embarrass the rela- 
tionship. There is law, order, authority, obedi- 
ence inviolate; but the son does always what he 
loves and chooses to do, for his heart and will 
are one with the father's. Nor is it a mere tran- 
sient relationship. The son cannot be sold or 
put away, but abides in the household. 

Jesus has said that if He, the Son of God, make 
us free, we shall be free indeed. Why free 
indeed? Why is this the true and perfect free- 
dom? Because the Son of God gives of that 
which is His own. Did He not say, €€ My peace 
I give unto you,' 7 and " That my joy might be in 
you "? So, likewise, He makes His disciples free 
in His own freedom, which is that of sonship to 
God. 

How shall a sinful soul receive this spirit of 



THE FREEDOM OF SONSHIP 147 

sonship from Jesus the Son of God — through 
faith? That one great word expresses it all. " I 
believe in Thee, trust myself to Thy sacrificial 
love, daily desire to know Thee near, take Thee 
as the very law of my life " — such is faith. Such 
is the open door to Him, and therefore to the 
spirit of sonship to God which his welcomed pres- 
ence inspires. For in that presence and fel- 
lowship the power of sin is broken. Its fetters 
fall. A new aspiration takes the place of the old 
ambition. A new affection expels the old love of 
the world. A new liberty puts to shame the old 
self-indulgence. " If any man is in Christ, he is 
a new creature " — a new creation, in the freedom 
and power of a son of God. 

I thank Thee, God and Father of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, for a nature that can be satisfied 
with nothing less than the perfect freedom of 
obedient filial love. Let me rest in that bliss- 
ful centre of life. Let me choose to be governed 
from above, not from below. Let me be at home, 
more and more, in the true home of the soul, 
which is our Father's kingdom. 



148 THE LISTENING HEART 



A TRUTH IN THE GRASS 

" Who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains. 
He giveth to the beast his food." — Psa. cxlvii, 8, 9. 

Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

The grass is a sign of the transient. In all 
literature, it seems to have been a chosen emblem 
of mortality. Losing its crown of beauty in a 
day, it is as "all flesh." But the grass also 
teaches the exactly opposite truth : it is a sign of 
immortality. Because it is God's provision of 
food for the beasts of the earth. Their hunger 
is proof that somehow and somewhere there is 
suitable food provided; for the Creator has not 
made their nature a tantalising deceit. Neither, 
we must believe, has He wrought tantalisation 
and deceit into the constitution of our human 
nature. Are we not much better than they? 
What then is our necessary food? Not the 
grass : not bread alone. There is a spirit in man 
that hungers for knowledge and truth and right- 
eousness. There is an instinctive longing for 
immortal life and love. There is need of that 
communion with the ever-living God in which is 
life eternal. Therefore this food of the spirit 



A TRUTH IN THE GRASS 149 

must be. It is a deeper reality than the short- 
lived herbage of the earth. And such indeed has 
been the testimony of those who have hearkened 
to the voice of spiritual need, which is the voice 
of God Himself in the soul, from the beginning 
even until this good hour. 

It has been fancifully suggested that if one's 
ears were keen and delicate enough, one might 
hear, in the still hours of the night, the growing 
of the grass. Certain it is that he that has ears 
to hear, may hear, in stillness of the spirit, the 
gentle and unobtrusive teaching of the grass. 
He may even hear therein the voice of the Creator, 
saying, " O soul that I made, rejoice and be glad, 
for I, the God of the field and forest, am much 
more thy God, and will not disappoint the deep- 
est need of thy nature." 

I bless Thee, Lord, for the lesson of the grass. 
Yes, I dare and must believe that Thou, who 
carest for the cattle on the mountains, according 
to their nature, wilt care for me according to 
mine. Thou who hast made the constitution of 
their being true, hast not made mine a falsity. I 
need Thee, O God ; I cannot live as that which is 
essentially human in me requires, without com- 
munion with Thee who only hast immortality: 
therefore, I know that Thou art, and in Thee 
eternal life. - 



150 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE PAIN OF LOVE 

" Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our 
sorrows." — Isa. liii. 4. 

Contextual reading, the Chapter. 

Do the loving suffer? O idle question! In 
human experience, there is no such thing as a 
painless love. " I cannot leave you, father," says 
the child in a story-poem, " love hurts so." " Yes, 
darling," replies the father, as his little girPs life 
ebbs away, " it is too good not to hurt." In a 
world of vicissitude and death, can there be love 
without separation, which is as a sword to the 
soul? In a world of sorrow, can there be love 
without sympathy, which is sorrowing with? In 
a world of want and helplessness and peril, can 
there be love without self-sacrifice, which is mak- 
ing cost that in its very nature is attended with 
pain? 

But selfishness, the unloving heart, the love- 
less life — is this, then, the path of peace? On 
the contrary, it is impoverishment and death. 
Let love depart, and the wellbeing is taken out 
of wealth, the heart out of labour, the joy out of 
joy. Love's pain is a notable sign of life — of a 



THE PAIN OF LOVE 151 

life giving itself for the redemption of other lives, 
and thus under discipline that it may grow into 
greatness and be crowned with glory. God has 
made us so. 

And hereby, we must believe, He is leading our 
thoughts upward to know something of His own 
nature, which passes knowledge. Here indeed is 
holy ground, the Holy of Holies, which may be 
approached only with reverent, trembling tread. 
But has not the veil been lifted by the Apostle 
and High Priest of our faith, even Jesus, who has 
shown us the glory of the Divine sacrificial 
love? And has not the mystery of suffering 
human love been thus interpreted to us? May 
we not better understand now the significance 
of fatherhood, and motherhood, and friendship, 
and the pure and good bearing with a broken 
heart the burdens of the unthankful and the evil? 
It is an image, poor and dim at best, of the Divine 
self-giving, which is from everlasting. It is the 
everyday parable of the love of God in Jesus 
Christ bearing our griefs and carrying our sor- 
rows, of the Cross in eternal redemption. And 
if it be bringing us nearer to Him, so that we 
may some day see Him as He is — Amen ! Amen ! 
To Thee, O Lord God, be the dominion of the 
soul which Thou hast made, and the glory of its 
perfecting through pain. 



152 THE LISTENING HEART 



TRUTH AND PEACE 

" Therefore love truth and peace " — Zech. viii. 19. 
Contextual reading, vv. 16-23. 

Each makes for the other. There can be no 
enduring peace, either within the soul itself or 
between man and man, in the absence of truth. 
Not in lies and hypocrisy, not in vanity and make- 
believe, can the soul repose. " First pure, then 
peaceable." Truth of character is the harmony 
of the will with the will of God, and harmony is 
peace. Truth of relationship with one's fellows 
is righteousness, goodwill, guilelessness, candour; 
and " the work of righteousness shall be peace, 
and the effect of righteousness quietness and 
confidence forever." 

The attempt to make peace either within one's 
self or with one's neighbour, at the expense of 
truth, is as if one should take the stones from the 
foundation of his house to build a wall for its 
protection. On the other hand, peace makes for 
truth. It is the quiet listening heart, the " heart 
of calm repose," that hears the voice of the Christ 
within. In the Palace Beautiful, the chamber of 
Peace in which Christian slept, " opened toward 



TRUTH AND PEACE 153 

the sun-rising." It is the tranquil mind that is 
open to the morning light of God's self-revelation. 
He who answered the question, "Art thou a 
king, then? " with the assertion that He had come 
into the world as the Witness to the truth, said 
to those who had been learning of Him, " My 
peace I give unto you " — the peace of Him who 
was the King of truth. His coming was indeed a 
sign of conflict : He brought a sword upon earth. 
But it was conflict with error and evil for the 
establishment of the kingdom of peace. Let it 
go on in the world, and in each individual soul, 
till that kingdom shall come with power. Mean- 
while let us also love that inward stillness which 
is the condition of increasing knowledge, that 
peace of God which is as an open window of the 
soul toward the sun-rising of His own word of 
revelation. Truth and peace — may they rule, as 
they must in every blessed life, with undisputed 
sway, each serving the other, both together sanc- 
tifying the soul. Thou God of truth and of peace, 
it is all in Thee, it is all through communion with 
Thy Spirit. 



154 THE LISTENING HEART 



AS A GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED 

" For who hath despised the day of small things ? " — 
Zech. iv. 10. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-10. 

It is certain that God has not despised it. 
The little children have long been singing of the 
drops of water and grains of sand that make the 
vast ocean and its far-reaching shores. But here 
comes the man of science to tell us that each sep- 
arate drop of water, and each grain of sand, is 
as large in proportion to one of the atoms of mat- 
ter of which it seems to be composed, as is the 
ocean or the shore in proportion to the single 
water-drop or sand-grain. So, at the physical 
heart of things, is the infinitely little, without 
which there could be no earth and no heavens. 
But God is there, and such is the method of His 
creation — the God of the atoms as truly as of 
the angels. 

Zerubbabel had undertaken what seemed an 
impossible task. But there came to him this 
word of the Lord : " Who art thou, O great moun- 
tain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a 
plain." And it was so ; but not through his own 



AS A GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED 155 

strength : " Not by might nor by power, but by 
my Spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts. . . . For who 
hath despised the day of small things? " 

Such a time, with its commonplace circum- 
stances, its false friends, its scornful passers-by, 
and no signs of glory as of the coming of the Son 
of Man in the sky, may be a very day of God, out 
of which He is going forth to build the Holy City 
upon earth. 

In the year 1836, Theodor Fliedner, pastor in 
the village of Kaiserwerth on the Rhine, opened a 
parish hospital, with two volunteer nurses and a 
little rickety furniture, as a Deaconess Home. 
To-day that thought of an unpretentious good 
man's heart is represented by the modern Order 
of Deaconesses in the Christian churches of 
Europe and America. In the year 1844, twelve 
young men met together in a small room over a 
draper's warehouse in London, to form a society 
for the spiritual improvement of " young men 
engaged in the drapery and other trades." To- 
day it is the Young Men's Christian Association, 
with its wonderful organising and stategic power, 
and its half a million members. 

Thou God of our common life, may we never 
grow disheartened at the prospects of any Chris- 
tian work because its beginnings seem feeble and 
unpromising. 



156 THE LISTENING HEART 



WHAT IS THY NAME? 

" And thou shalt call his name John." — Luke i. 13. 
Contextual reading, vv. 5-17. 

An emigrant ship was wrecked on a foreign coast. 
The body of a little girl, among others, drifted 
ashore. When they laid it in the grave, and the 
question was asked, "What name?" — someone 
replied, " God knows." And so upon the grave- 
stone was written that word, God knows. For 
there is no unknown grave, nor any unknown 
life, to Him. 

In truth, must we not believe that God only 
can name any child? Because the true name must 
distinguish him who bears it from all others. It 
would not be a mere sign by which he might 
know himself spoken to, or be recognised by 
others when spoken of, but a sign of his indi- 
viduality. For each human being has his own 
unique selfhood, and his own peculiar work to 
do in the world. There is good reason to believe 
that no two persons are made exactly alike, or 
called with exactly the same calling. God has 
made me me and not another, my mission mine, 
my life-plan mine only. Who knows it just as 



WHAT IS THY NAME? 157 

it is? Not my neighbour, not any deepest-seeing 
prophet, not I myself. God knows: and there- 
fore my true name is with Him only. 

" Thou shalt call his name John " — which is, 
being interpreted, to whom Jehovah is gracious. 
For this child was to be filled with the Holy 
Spirit from birth, made in greatness of character 
the peer of all who had gone before, sent upon 
the glorious career of heralding the approach of 
the Anointed of God. A child of grace — it was 
the interpretative name, given from Heaven, by 
which the preparer of the way of the Lord was to 
be called in this world, and a foretoken, perhaps, 
of the more significant name by which he shall 
be known in the world of light. 

Our heavenly Father, Thou who hast given me 
my individual being and inalienable selfhood, 
and hast called me with my own calling in my 
own appointed life-path, I am glad that my name 
is with Thee. I hope to know it better as time 
goes on — and in seonian time hereafter. I shall 
make it really my own as I am true to Thine 
ideal and purpose, which is disclosed little by 
little to the listening spirit. 



158 THE LISTENING HEART 



TO WHOM IS GOD GRACIOUS? 

" For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold 
upon John, and bound him in prison. . . . 

a And straightway the king sent forth a soldier of 
his guard and commanded to bring his head; and he 
went and beheaded him in the prison." — Mark vi. 17, 27. 

Contextual reading, vv. 14-29. 

John was laid hold of and bound in prison ; John 
was abandoned to the mercy of a cruel and con- 
scienceless woman; John was beheaded at what 
seemed the beginning of a great career. Is not 
this the man who, even before his birth, was 
named, by a sent-one from heaven, to whom 
Jehovah is gracious? It does not look so now. 
It looks as if he might have been named victim or 
disappointment or broken column. 

" Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? 
Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies ? n 

Short-sighted and unlovely misgiving! Must 
we still be learning anew, each for himself, in 
each successive generation, the way of the Lord 
with His chosen ones? It is not that they shall 



TO WHOM IS GOD GRACIOUS? 159 

be safeguarded from evil men, that they shall be 
well spoken of and well treated by everybody, 
that they shall live out the full measure of their 
days and pass into the Glory beyond through a 
natural and painless death. That is not the Di- 
vine election. The outer ill may be the sign and 
means of an inner good. The martyr's death 
is not deplorable for him. No tears for the pro- 
moted disciple, the translated witness-bearer, the 
crowned victor. His last service may be, fit- 
tingly, the best of all. " This He spake signify- 
ing by what manner of death he should glorify 
God." 

Far be it from me, Lord, to pray for a violent 
or an untimely death. Eather would I ask that 
the days may glide serenely on, till the work that 
I have planned in Thy name shall be completed, 
and that as life had its morning of bright fore- 
tokenings and of " long, long thoughts," so it 
may have an evening of sweet memories, and end 
amid the scenes I hold most sacred, in outward 
and inward peace. But all as Thou wilt, my 
God and Father. I do not wish to know what 
shall be on the morrow. The Lord is gracious — 
if Thou canst call me by that name, according 
to Thy gift and purpose, not indeed in some 
greater life, but even in mine, may all Thy perfect 
will be done. 



160 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE DEAFNESS OF PRIDE 

" Hear ye, and give ear ; be not proud ; for Jehovah 
hath spoken." — Jer. xiii. 15. 

Contextual reading, vv. 8-17. 

There are pupils, not destitute of natural ca- 
pacity or energy, of whom the teacher may be 
tempted to say, " I can teach them nothing, and 
my labour is in vain." It is because they seem to 
themselves to know already, or not to need guid- 
ance. They have no outward and upward look 
toward the teacher, but a habitual self-congratu- 
latory gaze at their own minds. It appears in 
their facial expression, their bearing, their tones 
of voice: and they cannot hear instruction, or 
submit to be advised or directed, because pride 
has stopped their ears. On the other hand, the 
best students are fain to hang upon the teacher's 
word, as if fearing that some little syllable may 
escape them. 

Scholarship, wisdom, knowledge, genius, is 
childlike. It wonders and inquires. But the self- 
sufficient will spend a whole morning in the 
company of the learned and experienced, only 
to grudge them the opportunity to open their 



THE DEAFNESS OF PRIDE 161 

mouths — so highly do they esteem the multitude 
of their own words. 

Similarly when God Himself speaks the proud 
will not hear. They are self-listening. They are 
self-absorbed. They are taking counsel not of 
Him, but of their own fancied gifts or acquisi- 
tions or goodness. God by His Spirit shows 
what is the blessed life: they are so engrossed 
in their own views and plans as not to 
see the heavenly vision. God rebukes their lack 
of worship and service — "Will a man rob 
God? " They are ready to defend their conduct 
— " Wherein have we robbed Thee? " God sends 
them the gracious message of eternal life through 
willingly receiving all from Him: they are se- 
cretly too boastful of their own moral standing 
to welcome His messengers. 

And now is it my own spirit and fault that I 
have been describing? Surely, Lord, there is no 
more subtle enemy of the knowledge of Thy ways 
than the sin of pride. It steals into one's holiest 
hours and aspirations. It changes its forms, dis- 
guising its features so as even to look like hu- 
mility, persisting, that it may corrupt the best 
and thus make it the worst. Save me from glory- 
ing, secretly or openly, directly or indirectly, in 
myself. The meek wilt Thou teach Thy way. 



162 THE LISTENING HEART 



ASPIRATION AND SELF-INDULGENCE 

" Would that we had died by the hand of Jehovah in 
the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when 
we did eat bread to the full ; for ye have brought us forth 
into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with 
hunger." — Ex. xvi. 3. 

Contextual reading, Chap. xiv. 10-14. 

It was no unworthy name by which Joseph's 
brothers called him in scorn, when they said to 
one another, " Behold, this dreamer cometh." 
Bright and high are the ideals of a stainless boy- 
hood — as it ought to be. Listening to some 
strong and captivating discourse, which falls as 
if spontaneously in words of fire from the 
speaker's lips, the youth says to himself, " I, too, 
will be an orator — and without that one's limita- 
tions." Or, in other circumstances, " I will be 
a successful man of affairs " ; or, " I will have 
such a sweet and perfect home as none that I 
have ever seen." Why should the realisation, in 
most instances, fall so far below the ideal? 
It is because of the flesh-pots of Egypt. When 
the aspiring beginner in the actual field of 
achievement finds that the heights at which he 
aims can be reached only by straitened or even 



ASPIRATION, SELF-INDULGENCE 163 

craggy pathways of self-denial and humble 
patient toil, he is tempted to forsake them for 
the lower levels of life. The present, which 
should be the servant, makes itself the antagon- 
ist of the future. The gratification of a moment 
is permitted to outweigh the peace of a lifetime. 
The love of ease casts its enervating spell over 
the spirit of enterprise. Self-indulgence clips 
the wings of aspiration and leaves it floundering 
in the dust. 

The people of Israel were stirred with the 
dream of freedom and the Land of Promise. But 
when it came to paying the price of freedom with 
poverty, and hunger, and the sword, and the lack 
of the old customary comforts, they faltered, and 
were ready to return to the full-fed animalism 
of their past. 

There is one ideal to which all others must 
reverently acknowledge subjection — with which 
if any other interfere, it is thereby self-con- 
demned. The conscience within us declares, It 
is the ideal of personal goodness. And its sworn 
enemy is self-indulgence. Not happiness, not 
joy: these are its fellow-helpers. But the un- 
regulated desires of the flesh and the mind. Let 
them not have dominion over us, O Christ, Thou 
holy and almighty Friend. Give us Thine own 
strength against them. 



164 THE LISTENING HEART 



AN IMPOSSIBLE FAITH 

" All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe 
that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And 
whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught 
against anyone; that your Father also who is in heaven 
may forgive you your trespasses." — Marie xi. 24, 25. 

Contextual reading, vv. 20-23. 

Suppose that, in an unforgiving spirit toward 
anyone, I ask my Father who is in heaven to 
forgive me my trespasses, and believe that I do 
receive forgiveness : have I received it indeed? It 
is an impossible case. I cannot believe in God's 
forgiveness of me, so long as I refuse to forgive 
my brother. For faith is no mere conception of 
the imagination or conviction of the reason. It 
is not of the intellect. It is trusting : it is open- 
ing the heart God-ward. But the heart that is 
pervaded by a spirit of unforgiveness is making 
no room for the Divine forgiveness. It is pre- 
occupied. The door is shut against all spirit of 
forgiveness, whether from man or from God. It 
cannot say, Come in, Thou forgiving God, make 
me clean with Thy forgiveness, and take posses- 
sion of that which is Thine own. 



AN IMPOSSIBLE FAITH 165 

Is it not hard to forgive? Very hard, some- 
times; but who has promised that to be a dis- 
ciple of Jesus, living the life of a son of God, 
is to drift easily along with the wind and tide 
of one's own inclinations. Let me not be quick 
to take offence, but considerate, charitable, 
broadminded. Let me not magnify an apparent 
slight into an actual affront. But am I really 
wronged? Then the blow may hurt, if it will. 
But I must be ready to make any excuse possible 
for him who inflicted it — as I should wish him 
to do in case of my own wrong-doing. And let 
me remember that mere indifference is not for- 
giveness. " I would do him no harm " — that is 
well. But it is not sufficient; for in addition I 
must give him a place in my prayers. I must 
sincerely seek his good in the presence of the 
Maker and Judge of us both; and if so, I shall 
be ready to do him good, and to seek him thus 
with my forgiveness — as my hope is that the 
heavenly Father will seek me with His forgive- 
ness. 

My God and Father, I cannot cast my brother 
out of my heart, and have Thee enter or remain 
within. Thou wilt abide there with him, and 
only so. I yield, I give up the evil spirit — " For- 
give us our debts, as we also have forgiven our 
debtors." 



166 THE LISTENING HEART 



GOD'S WILL 'AS KNOWN 

"Teach me to do Thy will/'— Psa. cxliii. 10. 
Contextual reading, vv. 1-10. 

But let us never forget, O Lord, that Thou hast 
already taught us Thy will, even ever of old. 
Thou hast abundantly shown us how to walk 
so as to please Thee. I open Thy Book of eternal 
life and of everyday guidance, and listen to its 
teaching : " Rejoice alway, pray without ceas- 
ing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will 
of God in Christ Jesus to you-ward." Hast Thou 
not here given a law for the spirit of our lives? 
" Everyone therefore that heareth these words 
of mine " — whose words? The words of Thine 
own Son, who was the Light of the world, reveal- 
ing Thy will. And they have not ceased to be 
spoken, through these printed leaves from with- 
out, and by the interpreting Spirit within. 
Where then is one who can rise up and say, 
" Most willingly would I do the right and the 
good, if only it were made known? " From the 
days of thy fathers, " He hath showed thee, O 
man, what is good; and what doth the Lord re- 
quire of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, 
&nd to walk humbly with thy God? " 



GOD'S WILL AS KNOWN 167 

I crave the obedient will. May the duty known 
be the duty done. May the opportunity offered 
be the opportunity embraced. May Thy word, 
Thou Teacher of men, be a lamp not simply to 
my eyes, but also and always to my feet. It is 
not a question of what has been taught me, but 
of what I have done. Here is the life-centre — 
to will to do Thy will. About it the light of 
Christ will gather, from it the delusions of self- 
worship will steal away. " If any man willeth 
to do His Will, he shall know of the teaching." 

" All round about our feet shall shine 
A light like that the Wise Men saw, 
If we our willing hearts incline 
To that sweet Life which is the Law " 

But these words that I am uttering — O God, 
are they indeed my prayer? Come they really 
from the heart? I shrink from words, I fear a 
fatal facility in the use of devotional language. 
Better silence before Thee than words that are 
words only. With the devout physician, every 
experimental inquiry into disease is a prayer for 
the healer's skill ; with the devout student, every 
book that he opens is a prayer for knowledge. 
With every Christian, the doing of Thy will is 
a prayer to be taught Thy will. 



168 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE CAST-OFF CROWNS 

u And shall cast their crowns before the throne, say- 
ing, Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive 
the glory and the honour and the power." — Rev. iv. 10, 
11. 

Contextual reading, vv. 4-11. 

Is it a strange thing to do — to discrown one's 
self? Might we rather expect the song of the 
redeemed, sitting still on their bright thrones, 
to be, We are worthy, our own right arm has won 
us the victory and gained us the glory? That 
could not be the life-song of heaven — of creatures 
in the realised presence of their Creator, of saints 
in the holy light of the sanctifying Spirit, of 
victors through the blood of the Lamb and the 
word of His testimony. Divinely fitting seem 
the cast-off crowns before the Throne. 

Here is a noble-minded mother. The guardian 
angel of his earliest years, she has lived even till 
now for her child. She instilled into his mind, 
through the teaching of her lips and the power 
of her personality, the principles of right con- 
duct in the Master's name. In his behalf, no 
self-denial has been too severe, no sacrifice other 
than a joy. His whole equipment for life came 



THE CAST-OFF CROWNS 169 

through her wise choices and patient, self-for- 
getting love. Whatever a Christian mother may 
be to a son, that has this woman been to the son 
whom God gave her. And now when his name 
has become known in the world, and he is 
crowned with the honours of the great and good, 
does he glory in them in her presence? No, no, 
he glories in her. The thought of her is the 
sweetest element in all that he has gained from 
the world. He is still a little child before his 
mother, and there lies his bright crown at her 
feet. It is a poor and unworthy figure of the 
coronation of the sons of God. 

To be received into the glory of their Lord, 
that will be all in all to the redeemed from earth. 
Tell me of being crowned, and I cannot repress 
the question, Crowned for what? Through no 
achievement of mine could I ever be called victor. 
Only one hand could ever put a crown upon my 
head — the hand of infinite forgiving Love. But 
tell me that somehow and sometime, through that 
love unknown, I may look upon His face in 
peace, and I shall ask no more. 



170 THE LISTENING HEART 



MY OWN BURDEN 

" For each man shall bear his own burden." — Gal. vi. 5. 
Contextual reading, vv. 1-10. 

" His own burden " of pain is each man's to 
bear for himself. A brother's help may make 
it lighter but cannot wholly remove it. Has not 
God shown that such is His wisdom and His way 
in perfecting the faith of His children? Some- 
times the wish is expressed for a dearly loved 
friend, " May you never know sorrow ! May your 
path be strewn all along with thornless flow- 
ers ! " Such good wishes are really hurtful 
wishes. Whoever has had a friend that would 
be really benefited by the entire absence of that 
Divinely appointed trial that comes through suf- 
fering? 

" His own burden " — let him bear it himself 
without imposing it unduly upon the sympathies 
of other people. The cry of the child slightly 
hurt in play is oftener an appeal for sympathy 
than a cry of pain. The child likes to show its 
wounds — taking the bandage off, that others may 
see the little scratch or bruise on the flesh. Let 
us not be needlessly showing the sores of the 



MY OWN BURDEN 171 

soul or evermore craving sympathy in the com- 
mon ills of life. 

" His own burden," which God has providenti- 
ally put upon him — let him bear that, and not 
borrow from the future a burden that need not 
be borne. The evil that we dread may never 
enter our life. If it should, we shall not have 
to meet it alone. 

" Nevertheless I am continually with Thee : 
Thou hast holden my right hand. 
Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel, 
And afterward receive me to glory/ 5 

Shall we then attempt to crowd into the brief 
space of the passing day the possible ills of the 
coming years? Shall we distrust the Saviour's 
word and dishonour His name by cherishing 
anxiety for the morrow? " The day hath ynough 
with his own griefe." 

My own burden — may the touch of Thy hand, 
Thou almighty Burden-bearer of the soul, make 
me strong to bear that which Thou hast laid upon 
me, with fidelity and praise. 



172 THE LISTENING HEART 



WHAT 18 WORTH WHILE 

" Except Jehovah build the house, 
They labour in vain that build it; 
Except Jehovah keep the city, 
The watchman waketh but in vain. 
It is vain for you to rise up early, 
To take rest late, 
To eat the bread of toil ; 

For so He giveth unto His beloved sleep [mar- 
gin, in sleep]. 

— Psa. cxxvii. 1, 2. 
Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

The meaning cannot be that the builder's or the 
watchman's or the bread-winner's task is use- 
less. For these, and the like of them, are all a 
part of God's own work in the world through 
human hands. Should men refuse to be em- 
ployed in doing such work, it must remain un- 
done, and there would be fatal lack of houses 
and safety and bread. " If any will not work, 
neither let him eat." 

But left to themselves, human hands can do 
simply and absolutely nothing. Who could lay 
the first stone of his house's foundation, if the 
hand of God, wielding the attraction of gravita- 
tion and all " natural " forces, were not building 



WHAT IS WOETH WHILE? 173 

conjointly with him? What nightly watchman 
at his post could keep the city, if God should no 
longer supply strength and intelligence to its de- 
fenders, or in any way restrain the mad brute 
passions of its enemies? What farmer — the man 
to whom the whole world looks for its food — ever 
grew a crop or made a harvest? It was the Son 
of God who said, " My Father worketh even until 
now, and I work." Without the eternal and cre- 
ative Divine Worker, men's best undertakings 
and endeavours would be but busy idleness. 
Nay, rather, there would be no human life. 

Therefore, it is vain for anyone to go about 
his work as if it were in the most real sense in 
his own hands. And it is more than worth while 
to have faith in God, trusting all things to Him, 

Surely it is fitting that we should begin each 
day with some morning hymn; for behold, what 
He is ever giving between the days, in the still 
hours of sleep — 

" Over tired eyes His hand He lays, 

And strength and hope and life renews." 

It is as if in the evening God laid His hand 
upon us, saying " Cease now from all striving, 
and yield yourself in heart and brain and soul 
back to me, the Source of your being, that I may 
renew the life I have given." 



174 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE INSIGHT OF LOVE 

" Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He 
should depart out of this world unto the Father, having 
loved His own that were in the world, He loved them 
unto the end." — John xiii. 1. 

Contextual reading, vv. 2-7. 

It might be well if the name lover could have re- 
tained in our English tongue its broader and 
early meaning of anyone who loves. It would be 
the highest title possible to be borne — so high, in- 
deed, that it could seldom have been borne with- 
out abuse. 

But there can be no doubt of the simple truth 
and reality of Jesus' love to men. With heart 
and will and with all the strength of the stain- 
less and holy soul, he loved them. It was dis- 
tinctly shown in His relations to the Twelve and 
to others who need not have hesitated to claim 
Him as their personal friend. And what manner 
of men were they? Who were these persons 
whom the Man whose soul was incapable of a 
low or petty thought, who was of too pure eyes 
to look upon sin, whose constant aim was to do 
the will of His Father, chose as His companions 
and loved unfalteringly unto the end? We can 



THE INSIGHT OF LOVE 175 

never know how much there must have been in 
them to wound Him — how much at which the 
mind and heart of the Righteous One must have 
been offended. Yet He loved them, He was 
glad of their presence, He would have them with 
Him in the daily round of life, He would not be 
far separated from them even in the Garden of 
Sorrow. 

Did Jesus then love that which is essentially 
unlovely? It could not be. But Jesus had the 
insight to see what is of real worth and excel- 
lence amid much that was unlovely, repulsive 
and sinful. He saw the divine humanity in men. 
Whatever there was of the image of God in any- 
one, whatever potentiality of goodness — to that 
the heart of the Son of Man was drawn, and 
there He rested in His love. He discerned that 
which ought to be, and might be, as well as that 
which actually was. 

Have I so learned Christ? Then I shall be 
slow to complain of the lack of what might be 
called interesting associates, or refined surround- 
ings, or cultured society. I shall find humanity 
precious. I shall discern the true heart beneath 
the coarse clothing, the pulsations of love amid 
encrusting selfishness, the possibility of good in 
the evil mind. Passion is blind, but love can 
see through great darkness. 



176 THE LISTENING HEART 



HEARTSEASE 

" To shine upon them that sit in darkness and the 
shadow of death, 
To guide our feet into the way of peace." 

— Luke i. 79. 
Contextual reading, vv. 67-79. 

The universal unrest is shown every hour and 
everywhere — in greed, in fretfulness, in profan- 
ity, in the attempt to make life a pleasure-ground, 
in grasping ambition. Who will guide our feet 
into the way of peace? 

Well may peace be spoken of as a " way " along 
which one is making a journey. For the essence 
of peace is not inaction. It is far from be- 
ing a state of having nothing to do. It is har- 
mony with the law of one's being. Whether the 
law command to sit still or to go forward, to rest 
or to labour, in obedience is peace. There may 
be peaceful motion : there may be unrestf ul rest. 
The broad, deep river gliding softly down its 
course without let or hindrance, suggests a truer 
idea of peace than does the dull and stagnant 
pool, whose waters cannot find the outlet which 
their nature demands. The bird which loves to 
soar as well as to sing, borne at will through the 



HEARTSEASE 177 

wide realm of air, is more at rest than his cap- 
tive fellow that pines in the cage for the freedom 
and flight for which he was made. There is no 
lovelier picture of peace than a sleeping child: 
but confine the same child when wide awake, 
every nerve tingling with life and craving activ- 
ity, to a chair or a couch — it will be painfully 
ill at ease. So we learn that peace is found in 
right relations to the laws of God in our being. 
Is it submission? Undoubtedly, it is putting 
ourselves under the authority of the eternally 
right and good. Is it humility? No doubt the 
poorly clad shepherd boy in the Valley of Hu- 
miliation " wears more of that herb called hearts- 
ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and 
velvet." For humility is the recognition of one's 
true place, with the consequent reverence for 
that which is above, and of obedience to the vision 
of the highest. 

But who shall show the way of peace? The 
Dayspring from on high, the unerring Guide of 
the soul, He whose feet knew no other path. 
" Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart ; 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls." " That 
in me ye may have peace." 



178 THE LISTENING HEAET 



HOW TO HEAR 

"Take heed, therefore, how ye hear." — Luke viii. 18. 
Contextual reading, vv. 9-19. 

How then shall we hear? As Jesus Himself has 
shown the way, it may be represented by the one 
word obedience. Certainly all other good quali- 
ties of the listener — attentiveness, prayerfulness, 
docility, eagerness — culminate and reach their 
final expression in the doing of the truth. "If 
ye know these things, blessed are ye, if ye do 
theni." The good ground is that which bears 
fruit, many fold. 

And here as elsewhere the law of increase 
through possession is illustrated. Moral truth 
is not really possessed till it is done. It only lies 
on the surface of the mind, not ingrained, not 
wrought into the life. The man may think that 
he has it, but in any deeply real sense he has it 
not ; and even the slight hold with which he does 
take possession of it, will relax. "From him 
shall be taken away even that which he thinketh 
he has." But the man who does the truth will 
not only make it a real and permanent posses- 
sion, but will at the same time enlarge his 



HOW TO HEAR 179 

capacity for truth, and so will have more of it 
to know and to do. " To him shall be given." 

Suppose that before this evening's sun shall 
sink to rest we should be called into the other 
life: with what treasure of moral truth should 
we enter there? Not with the amount that we 
have heard, but with that only which has been 
wrought into the immortal texture of character 
by obedience. 

Thou, Lord, hast not withheld from me the 
vision of Thy truth. Nor has it ever come un- 
accompanied with an imperative. Always it 
gives me something to do. Have I been dis- 
obedient unto the heavenly vision? If so, no 
wonder if it have lost its power and dimmed 
away. Great are my opportunities to learn. Books 
and living teachers are all about me. But what 
avails that I should read such and such books, 
even the books of Holy Scripture, or hear such 
and such sermons? What though I have sat 
under the ministry of the greatest preachers of 
the age, and can name their names and speak 
admiringly of their messages? It is not the 
hearer, but the doer, that really has the truth and 
knows the will of God. And such possessions 
are ever increasing, such knowledge shines more 
and more unto the perfect day. 



180 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE SERVING KING 

" Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things 
into His hands, and that He came forth from God, and 
goeth unto God, riseth from supper and layeth aside 
His garments ; and He took a towel and girded Himself. 
Then He poureth water into the bason, and began to 
wash the disciples' feet." — John xiiL 3-5. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-17. 

Does it mean that although Jesus was conscious 
that He came forth from God and was going unto 
God, yet He girded Himself with a towel to wash 
the disciples' feet? Or is the meaning, Because 
of this consciousness He did so? I think, the 
latter. For the whole Bible, the whole record of 
the growing Divine self-revelation, has taught 
that it is Godlike to minister. 

" He healeth the broken in heart, 
He bindeth up all their wounds. 
He telleth the number of the stars, 
He giveth them all their names." 

Have you seen the nurse dressing the wounds 
of her patient? He that rules the heavens — 
sending forth worlds innumerable in their awful 



THE SERVING KING 181 

paths through trackless abysms of space — binds 
up the wounds of the sorrowful on earth. 

There is one figure, it would seem, that in all 
ages is without a rival for setting forth the most 
comforting ministration of love. It is not that 
of the friend, nor of the sister, nor of the father : 
it is that of motherhood. The arms of the mother 
about the hurt child — not only in his infancy, 
but later and later in life — her kind words, and 
ready sympathy, and warm affection, and ten- 
derly brooding human presence, is the best pic- 
ture that has yet been drawn of consolation in 
trouble and sorrow. But a prophet of Israel, 
" Isaiah, is very bold, and saith," this word of 
Jehovah : " As one whom his mother comforteth, 
so will I comfort you." 

Therefore, Jesus, the Revealer, making Him 
known as it had never been done before, came 
" not to be ministered unto but to minister." 
Girt round with glory and power in the holy city, 
while the nations came from afar to receive the 
Law at his mouth? No. His ideal humanity 
was shown when, in the full consciousness of 
whence He came and whither He went and who 
He was, He bent over the disciples' feet, and 
wiped them with the towel wherewith He had 
girded Himself. And His throne, it was the 
Cross. 



182 THE LISTENING HEAET 



'JESUS OUR KING 

" And a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, 
and a covert from the tempest, as streams of water in 
a dry place, as the shade of a great rock in a weary 
land." — Isa. xxxii. 2. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-17. 

What would be thought of a king who, together 
with the brain of a great ruler, should have the 
heart of a servant? One whose most familiar 
thought was not, How grand I am! but, What 
can I do for the people? A servant, even a father 
and a brother to the least and lowest person in 
all his realm. Imperial in intellect and author- 
ity, yet his heart burdened with real love toward 
the men and women and children over whom he 
had been appointed to reign. Would not that 
be a true-born king? 

The founder of the Hebrew monarchy laid hold 
upon one high royal trait, and set it forth " in 
beauty's light ineffable" in his last inspired 
psalm : 

" One that ruleth over men righteously, 
That ruleth in the fear of God, 
He shall be as the light of the morning, when 
the sun riseth, 



JESUS OUR KING 183 

A morning without clouds, 

When the tender grass springeth out of the 

earth, 
Through clear shining after rain." 

But what next? 

" Verily my house is not so before God." 

The ideal had not been realised in his own reign. 

It was a still more glorious king that arose in 
the vision of prophecy : that of a man who should 
be at once the Defence and the Consolation of 
his people — a " hiding-place " and " rivers of 
water/' a " covert from the tempest " and the 
" shade of a great rock in a weary land." But 
neither was this prophecy fulfilled in any suc- 
cessor upon the throne of David. In most cases, 
it was very far otherwise. The king, weak or 
wicked, or both weak and wicked, sought his own 
pleasure, not the people's welfare. 

But in the fulness of time the ideal became a 
Fact. Far greater than the prophet's tenderest 
or sublimest thought, Jesus our King was born 
in Bethlehem and died outside the gates of the 
holy city on the Cross of Sacrifice. Lord of the 
soul, His life was one ceaseless ministration of 
kindness and mercy. 



184 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE PROSPERITY OF LOVE 

" They shall prosper that love thee." — Psa. cxxii. 6. 
Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

Truly it will be so. It cannot be otherwise than 
that those who sincerely love the City of God, 
the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, in any era 
or period of its history, will prosper. Not 
always, it is true, with outward prosperity — en- 
joying perfect health, or becoming rich and 
increased in goods so as to have need of nothing. 
This may or may not be. But with inward pros- 
perity — having the very kingdom of heaven in 
their hearts. This must be. Because, for one 
thing, the lover of the Church will attend upon 
its ordinances; and these are means of grace 
whereby one shall grow in the grace and knowl- 
edge of God. Then, too, the lover of the Church 
will be a worker in its cause; and according to 
an immutable law of the spiritual life, whatever 
one does for others he does unto himself — deepen- 
ing his own spirituality, enriching his own spirit. 
But chiefly, the very love itself is prosperity. 
In truth, what can be better? No deeper anath- 
ema than to be cursed with an unfeeling heart, 



THE PEOSPERITY OF LOVE 185 

no richer benediction than to love with a Christ- 
like devotion. For God, as revealed in the cross 
of His Son, is love; and to be like Him, perfect 
in the heavenly Father's perfection, is the all 
of life. 

I see a mother continually serving her son. In 
his infancy, boyhood, youth, early manhood, 
with untiring self-sacrifice she ministers to his 
needs. I approach her and say : " You are doing 
a great deal for your boy, but of course you ex- 
pect to get it back again. It is an investment 
for your own old age, when he shall supply you 
with the comforts and luxuries of life. I see 
your motive, and understand it all." I could 
hardly misapprehend or wound a mother's heart 
more effectually. Love is in itself joy, riches, 
motive, ineffable satisfaction. Love is its own 
reward. 

Lord Jesus, I ask no outward prosperity for 
any service to Thy cause that I may ever have 
offered or attempted. I ask no pay for loving 
Thee. Unworthy to be numbered even with Thy 
hired servants, still I would not have the spirit 
of a hireling. Love will make the very doing of 
Thy will wealth and blessedness. If henceforth 
Thou couldst call me not bondservant but friend ! 



186 THE LISTENING HEART 



CONTINUOUS CONVERSION 

" Though our outward man is decaying, yet our 
inward man is renewed day by day." — II Cor. iv. 16. 

Contextual reading, vv. 7-18. 

Paul does not say : " My inward man was 
renewed twenty-one years ago in the city of 
Damascus; then and there was I arrested in a 
life of ignorance and unbelief, and made a new 
creation in Christ Jesus." That, indeed, was an 
experience never to be forgotten or disparaged; 
and he tells it, with tongue and pen, again and 
again. But not here. It is another and greater 
aspect of the truth that he is emphasising now. 
It is the perpetual cleansing and upbuilding of 
the soul. It is the daily inflow of the life of God. 
Only this could keep even the chief of Apostles 
a Christian. Without this, the inward no less 
than the outward man must decline and decay. 
Let me never imagine or practically take for 
granted that it will suffice that I was truly con- 
verted twenty-one years ago. Think of a tree 
concerning which the owner should have little 
or nothing to say except, On such a day it was 
planted. If it be a healthy and fruitful tree 



CONTINUOUS CONVERSION 187 

to-day, that is enough. If it be diseased, or 
worthless, or in decline, what avails that it 
started well or was once undoubtedly alive? 

" Day by day." Indeed, it is thus that even 
the outward man is kept in life. The stone is 
fixed. The block of marble knows no such pro- 
cess as waste and repair, and accordingly is 
substantially the same now as a thousand years 
ago. But it is not so with any living thing. The 
tissues of plant, or animal, or human body, are 
breaking down and building up moment by mo- 
ment. Nevertheless very plain is the difference 
between the outward and the inward man. The 
outward is for a little space of time, and then, 
with the cessation of renewal, must cease to be; 
the inward is for the timeless sphere. Here the 
renewal never ceases. " He is sinking now," said 
the physician at the bedside of a dying Christian 
man. " No, doctor, I am rising," w r as the whis- 
pered response. 

" Day by day." No day without some thought 
upon the deeper things of life, without aspira- 
tion, without prayer, without the bread of truth, 
without work in the Master's name. Quicken 
me, Lord, through Thine own appointed means, 
according to Thy word. 



188 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE JOY OF OBEDIENCE 

" I will run the way of Thy commandments, 
When Thou shalt enlarge my heart." 

— Psa. cxix. 32. 

Contextual reading, II Cor. 5. 

It is more difficult to live the life of a civilised 
man— meeting the ceaseless obligations of home, 
business, society, civil government — than to waste 
one's days in animalism, like the savage. Never- 
theless, the civilised man experiences a satisfac- 
tion the savage knows nothing of, and would by 
no means exchange places with his humbler 
brother of the woods. 

An unconverted friend asks, "Do you really 
enjoy the Christian life? " That is as if one were 
to say, Do you really enjoy the life of a learner? 
would you not rather live in ignorance, never 
investigating a question, or reading a book, or 
even undergoing the tedium of learning the 
alphabet? Or, as if one were to say, Do you 
enjoy a life of cleanliness and industry? would 
you not rather live in untidiness and sloth? Or, 
Do you enjoy friendship and neighbourliness? 
would you not rather simply live for yourself? 



THE JOY OF OBEDIENCE 189 

It is a sorry sort of man that, in such instances, 
fails to prefer the more difficult life. We do not 
sit down and count the pleasures that must be 
foregone, and set over against them the pleasures 
that may be enjoyed, in the higher mode of living. 
It is enough to know that it is the higher, that 
it is more nearly what we were made for, that 
as such it must be both the nobler and the 
happier. 

So with the very highest life of all, which only 
is life indeed — that of a son of God doing His 
Father's will. Truly, here is no course of self- 
indulgence. Here is self-denial, conflict, strenu- 
ous endeavour, obedience. But why not? It is 
suitable to our moral nature. It calls forth our 
highest powers and possibilities. It unseals, ac- 
cordingly, the deepest founts of joy. It is the 
blessed life. 

Moreover, love is strangely daring and swift- 
footed. " I will protect you," says timidity itself, 
love-inspired, and strikes its blow in the very 
face of death. " I will go," says indolence itself, 
love-inspired, and hastens on winged feet to seek 
help for the needy or endangered. In like man- 
ner, as God's servants become large-hearted in 
His service, obedience takes no account of dif- 
ficulties, but duties are done with the swiftness 
of joy. 



190 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE WILL TO HEAR 

" I will hear what God Jehovah will speak." — Psa. 
Ixxxv. 8. 

Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

Often have I besought Thee, Lord, to hear while 
I speak. But another prayer rises in my heart 
to-day: it is the desire, the determination, the 
prayer that I may hear when Thou speakest. For 
Thou art the eternally self -revealing God. Thou 
art ever speaking, in divers tones and forms of 
utterance, to the souls which Thou hast made. 
As the swift course of the sun, so are Thy words 
unto the ends of the earth. The beauty and won- 
derfulness of the world, the outgoings of the 
morning and evening, the whispering leaves, the 
dome of heaven, the unsounded depths and the 
unattainable heights, are ever making their ap- 
peal to the soul: and it is Thine appeal. The 
events and experiences of life, joyous or sad, 
familiar or rare — of other lives and of my own 
— are full-fraught with instruction: and the 
teaching is Thine. The strange undefined yearn- 
ings of the soul, which seem to come out of the 
infinite and lose themselves in the infinite again, 



THE WILL TO HEAR 191 

in " thinking of the days that are no more," or 
at any even the most unexpected time, not in an- 
swer to any call of ours — are they not the soul's 
answer to Thy touch, Thou infinite God? 

Here before me now is Thy full-volumed speech 
in the Scriptures which Thou hast inspired — and 
above all, from the lips and life of Him through 
whom in these last days Thou hast spoken, even 
Thy Son ; and speaking within — shall I not dare 
confess it? — the very Spirit of truth, the in- 
fallible interpreter of whatsoever Thou dost speak 
from without. 

Do Thou waken me to hear, as a disciple, morn- 
ing by morning. It may be that I fear to receive 
some word of Thine, lest it expose a secret sin, 
or lay an unwelcome duty upon the conscience. 
May it not be so. Whensoever Thou speakest, 
whether it be to wound or to heal, to command 
or to promise, if so be it is indeed a word of 
Thine, may I receive it willingly. Quicken me, 
Lord, to recognise Thy voice, and to obey, my 
conscience bearing witness in the Holy Spirit. 
Then shall I hear the very words of life, when 
Thou shalt give me the listening and obedient 
heart. 



192 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE CALL INTO DARKNESS 

" By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go 
out unto a place which he was to receive for an inherit- 
ance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went." 
— Heb. xi. 8. 

Contexual reading, vv. 1-22. 

In fact, all human life is a going forth into an 
unknown futurity. A child is born: how long 
will he live, and where, and how, and with what 
achievements or failures? Only by the Eye to 
which the end shows clear as the beginning is 
that vision seen. A young man enters upon his 
occupation. It is with bright hopes of success — 
it ought to be. But whether his ship will be 
wrecked, or in what plight it will make the har- 
bour, he can no more certainly determine than 
can any sailor on any seas. A bridal couple 
stand before the altar: it is a new and untried 
sphere which they dare to enter. 

But that which is true of the starting point 
and of the chief turning points of life, is true of 
all its circumstances and situations. They are 
changing continually in unanticipated ways. 
What next? To what scene will I be introduced 
by the next step of the journey? A day hence, 



THE CALL INTO DAEKNESS 193 

an hour, a moment — what will be its experience 
of joy, of pain, of difficulty, of duty? Lord of 
our life, Guide of the soul, Thou knowest. 

Abraham was an emigrant. He went from his 
home in Haran, and with little or no knowledge 
of the country toward which his footsteps were 
turned. But so have emigrants innumerable 
gone forth, East and West, in ancient and in 
modern times. And so do we all in our contin- 
uous emigration into the unexplored future. 
Where then was Abraham's peculiarity? what 
did he more than others? Or, to bring the ques- 
tion home to ourselves, where is the peculiarity 
and the distinction of every man of faith to-day? 

It is in the Call that he hears and obeys. He 
asks, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? " 
He accepts his occupation as a vocation, his life- 
path as a plan of God. He will take this direc- 
tion or that, do this work or that, remain quietly 
where he is or put the solid globe between him- 
self and the old home, according to his interpre- 
tation of the mind and will of God in his life. 

" And I, where'er He went, would go, 

Nor question where the path might lead, 
Enough to know that here below 
I walked with God, indeed." 



194 THE LISTENING HEART 



LIFE IN DEATH 

" As dying, and behold, we live." — II Cor. vi. 9. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-10. 

Paul was continually dying. His burdens and 
exposures were such as flesh and blood could 
not long endure. We must think of him as pre- 
maturely old, with shattered nerves and aching 
limbs and defective eyesight — unable to write 
with his own hand the letters he would send to 
the churches. But behold, he was all alive. 
Never so much alive as now. " Such a one as 
Paul the aged " is younger in spirit than Saul 
the persecuting Pharisee or the newly converted 
Christian. The true self, going on from strength 
to strength, knows nothing of decadence or death. 
Greatly to be desired is health of body. Sick- 
ness, disease, anaemia, is an evil, not a good. 
The colourless cheek or sunken eye is no mark of 
sainthood. It is rather a mark of some habitual 
violation of the laws of God in the body. In a 
great cathedral I have seen a statue of the aveng- 
ing angel, with a drawn sword, and the inscrip- 
tion, " If any man defile the temple of God, him 
will God destroy." But that majestic pile was 



LIFE IN DEATH 195 

not the sort of temple that the author of these 
solemn words had in mind. He was speaking of 
a far more marvellous structure, even the temple 
of the body, which enshrines the soul that is 
itself the shrine of the Divine Presence. Its 
honour is indeed guarded by the rewards and 
penalties of the Law which has come forth from 
the mouth of God. 

Yet there is no care or good use that can pre- 
vent the body's perishing, whereas the inward 
man is renewed day by day. So the body does 
not constitute, but imperfectly represents the 
real self. We are spirit, not flesh. In the midst 
of death, therefore, we are in life. " You can- 
not touch me/ 9 said the unvanquished martyr to 
the consuming flames. More alive than ever is 
the discarnate spirit, even as the psyche lives a 
larger life than the grub. 

But it was life indeed, and not mere continued 
existence, that the triumphant Apostle meant 
when he said, " Behold, we live." How shall it 
be gained? Thou God of the living, it is found 
only in communion with Thee. It is renewed 
through waiting upon Thee. " He that liveth 
and believeth in me shall never die." 



196 THE LISTENING HEART 



HOW; TO 'ABOUND 

" I know also how to abound." — Phil. iv. 12. 
Contextual reading, vv. 10-20. 

To abound? O great-hearted follower of Him 
who, though He was rich, became poor for others' 
enrichment! In bonds, possessing nothing, to 
have received the gifts brought by Epaphroditus 
from Philippi — some good food or warm clothing 
— that was to " have all and abound." That was 
to thee abundance, wealth. 

Shall we of the present day, in the ordinary 
circumstances of life, make an inventory of our 
possessions? Conveniences; comforts; adorn- 
ments ; ministrations to the senses, to the tastes, 
to the imagination, to the social sensibilities, to 
the heart and spirit — they can in no wise be 
numbered or measured. If the Apostle to the 
Gentiles, a Roman citizen, a man of knowledge 
and culture, a most courteous Christian gentle- 
man, when in prison and destitute of almost 
everything that makes life outwardly pleasant 
and good, had " all " in abundance, what shall be 
said of our riches? Alas, for the blind eyes that 
will not see them! Shame upon the dumb lips 



HOW TO ABOUND 197 

that will not speak of them cheerfully to men or 
gratefully to God, but contrariwise are prone to 
complain of hardships and poverty ! 

Outward abundance may tend to inward 
dearth and death. " Because thou sayest, I am 
rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of 
nothing; and knowest not that thou art the 
wretched one and miserable and poor and blind 
and naked. " Therefore is it of the utmost im- 
portance to learn what this noble-minded pris- 
oner of the Lord in Eome learned, in the experi- 
ences of life, by the power of the indwelling 
Spirit of Christ — to learn how to abound. It 
is a more difficult lesson than how to suffer want. 
Not, indeed, difficult, theoretically. We know 
the doctrine. It has been made clear as noonday 
that all our powers, acquisitions, possessions, 
within and without, are a trust from God's 
hand, and that the Christian way to abound is 
to use and manage them in His name. But the 
doing of it ! 

Help us, Thou Infinite Giver, daily to restore 
to Thee Thine own. And that will be to multi- 
ply wealth indeed, even unto eternal abundance. 
That will be to transmute gold into Christlike 
character, and thus to lay up treasure in heaven. 



198 THE LISTENING HEART 



TEE LIFE TEAT ENDURES 

" So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle." — Psa. 
cm. 5. 

Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

Even the schoolboy, to whom the idea of death 
is so strange and unreal, is attracted by the story 
of the Spanish adventurers who went in search 
of the Fountain of Youth, but discovered only 
the land of Florida, whose flowers faded, and 
whose people died, like all others. Yet vain as 
any dream of the night is the daydream of im- 
mortal flesh and blood. Old age comes to the 
man as inevitably as growth and maturity to the 
child, and it is no less natural to die than to 
be born. 

Nevertheless there is such a thing as " a green 
old age." There are young old people. What- 
ever marks of time the ruthless years may have 
left upon their faces, their hearts, unwrinkled 
still, pulsate with "more life and fuller" and 
deeper than in the heyday of youth. They are 
peaceful, buoyant, hopeful, interested in others' 
welfare, sweet and fruitful with love to God and 
their fellows. Alas, that all should not be so! 
But some are old indeed — worn in spirit, disap- 
pointed, fretful, dissatisfied, captious. "How 



THE LIFE THAT ENDURES 199 

old art thou?" asked Pharaoh of Jacob. "Few 
and evil have the days of the years of my pil- 
grimage been." It was not a bright testimony. 
" How old are you? " I heard it asked of a glad- 
hearted, sweet-spirited Christian man. " Fifty- 
four years young" was the reply. " I am often 
saluted as old," said Newman Hall on his eigh- 
tieth birthday, " but I do not feel old. Age 
weakens only capacity for playthings of child- 
hood. The more abiding bounties and beauties 
cause fuller joy with increasing experience. 
Poetry, science, mountains, flowers, the human 
face divine, radiant with devotion to God and 
affection to men, the Gospel studied and 
preached, the high purpose of seeking and saving 
the lost, Christian intercourse, home bliss, com- 
munion with God, the Blessed Hope nearing and 
brightening — age can experience in these truer 
joys than are possible for youth." 

Is not perpetual youthfulness a matter of tem- 
perament? Partly so; partly a result of that 
good gift of God, an instinctive disposition to 
look upon the bright side of things. But more 
truly and deeply a matter of personal religion. 
For sin, being a violation of God's law, naturally 
tends to injure, enfeeble, destroy. Goodness, 
being harmony with God's law, even His law of 
eternal love, is strength and peace and life and 
joy. 



200 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE GIVING OF f A LIFE 

" Eemember them that are in bonds as bound with 
them, them that are ill-treated as being yourselves also 
in the body." — Heb. xiii. 3. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1, 2, 15, 16. 

Suppose that one's friend, though true and 
gifted and great-hearted, should be unable to 
make him many presents : would he be willingly 
exchanged for another, who had less love but 
more money? Suppose that one's own father, 
revered, trusted, delighted in, should have no 
wealth to bequeath: would the memory of him 
ever cease to be sacred and dear? There is noth- 
ing on earth so rich and powerful as person- 
ality. There is nothing that may be so much to 
us as a person. Weigh the worth of human 
companionship, the value of a friend — against 
what? You have wrought a service for one whom 
you deeply love; and he offers a sum of money, 
saying, " You have done your duty, take this 
and go be happy." It was himself you wanted. 
The offer of pay and dismissal is worse than an 
offence. 
If therefore I would fain become a beneficent 



THE GIVING OF A LIFE 201 

force, a joybringer, in another's life, it lies within 
my power. It lies within my power, whatever 
the outward poverty, because I can give him of 
myself. Here is the respect in which every man 
is rich: he possesses the incalculable wealth of 
personality, and need never complain, " I have 
nothing to give." 

And the way of entrance into the life we would 
win or bless, is sympathy. One can touch the 
heart of little children only through the child- 
heart in himself, the heart of young men only 
through a genuine fellowfeeling with the pleas- 
ures and ideals of their life, the heart of the suf- 
fering only through sympathetic suffering. It is 
a mutual life-sharing. One takes of another's 
and gives of his own. Very beautiful is the sym- 
bol of it in certain city slums of our day — the 
Settlement Home. This is your life, says the 
refined and loving-hearted slum-sister, I will 
make it mine, and will share mine with you. " As 
bound with them." 

Where then shall it be learned — this strangely 
sweet and unselfish wisdom? Nowhere so truly 
as in the life-sharing of the Son of God. " Since 
then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, 
He also Himself in like manner took part of the 
same." 



202 THE LISTENING HEART 



MORE THAN CONQUERORS 

"More than conquerors." — Rom. viii. 37. 
Contextual reading, vv. 35-39. 

May a warrior become more than a conqueror? 
Aye, much more. In truth, there is no such 
thing in Christian warfare as bare conquest. 
For through the overcoming of hindrances and 
antagonisms, there is realisation of increasing 
personal power. Through the conquest of spir- 
itual enemies, there comes enlargement of the 
resources of the soul, which is the richest fruit 
of victory. Tribulation, anguish, persecution, 
famine, nakedness, peril, sword — can any of 
these, or all conjoined, separate us from the love 
of Christ? On the contrary, they are enemies 
which, conquered, have already done the service 
of friends. To meet them face to face, to suffer 
at their hands, to rise superior to them, is to 
unite the soul in closer bonds of love with its 
Lord. Therefore, not over them, but in and 
through them, it becomes more than conqueror. 

There are barren victories. " One more such," 
sometimes cries the military commander, " will 
cost me my army." I thank Thee, O Christ, that 



MORE THAN CONQUERORS 203 

there are none such in Thy service. Here the 
warfare itself enriches. Thy followers are drawn 
close together and closer to Thee, and are 
strengthened with strength in their souls, by 
every good fight of faith. Even the life of the 
patriot-soldier is promotive of certain great per- 
sonal qualities — of reverence for authority, 
prompt obedience, hardihood of will, love of 
country. And not without significance was the 
fact that of a Roman soldier Jesus declared that 
He had found more faith in him than in any son 
of Israel. But here is only an imperfect pre- 
figurement of the higher truth that in the Chris- 
tian warfare and service there is complete spir- 
itual development. So that the highest note 
of triumph at last shall be, not " I have con- 
quered," but " I have attained " ; not " My 
enemies are fallen, are fallen," but " Through 
Him that loved me, I am perfected." " More 
than conquerors" — yea, sons of God made per- 
fect as such through conflict and suffering. 



204 THE LISTENING HEART 



OPPORTUNITY AS REWARD 

" I know thy works (behold, I have set before thee a 
door opened, which none can shut)." — Rev. Hi. 8. 

Contextual reading, vv. 7-13. 

It is one of Christ's ways of rewarding fidel- 
ity. He enlarges the faithful servants' field of 
activity. Whatever they have already wrought 
in His cause, by so much is their capacity to work 
and serve increased; and inasmuch as they are 
now capable of doing more than ever, the oppor- 
tunity is providentially offered them. It is so 
in this life ; and the intimations of the New Testa- 
ment, together with the argument from analogy, 
suggest that it will be so hereafter. " Because 
thou wast found faithful in a very little, have 
thou authority over ten cities." " Thou hast 
been faithful over a few things, I will set thee 
over many things." So here, in the Lord's mes- 
sage to the Church in Philadelphia, which, alone 
of the Seven Churches, He charges with no un- 
faithfulness : " I know thy works — I have set 
before thee a door opened." It was the door of 
opportunity. It introduces these working Chris- 
tians into some new sphere of life and service. 



OPPORTUNITY AS REWARD 205 

The reward of industry is another work to do. 
The reward of aspiration is a higher height. The 
reward of enterprise and faithfulness is oppor- 
tunity. The wages of Virtue — 

" Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." 

Our souls, O Lord, with all their needs, hid- 
den or manifest, are Thine own creation, and 
Thou knowest them altogether. Therefore, in 
wisdom hast Thou made the worker's reward 
suitable to his nature. I used to wonder why a 
man who had wrought one great successful work, 
should not rest and be satisfied. Why should 
Columbus have risked the perils of the deep for 
a second or a third voyage? Why should the 
author of one satisfactory book go toiling on to 
produce another and still another? A crude and 
thoughtless question, asked in ignorance of the 
soul of man. For does not the fact of the first 
achievement show love of achievement which can 
never be satisfied? The joy is in going oil The 
soul is touched with the passion of the infinite: 
it can never become, it can never do, enough to 
make itself willing to quit. In Thy service, my 
Master, may the door of opportunity be never, 
either here or hereafter, shut in my face. 



206 THE LISTENING HEART 



HEARING FOR OTHERS' SAKE 

" The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of 
them that are taught, that I may know how to sustain 
with words him that is weary : He wakeneth morning by 
morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as they that are 
taught." — Isa. I. 4. 

Contextual reading, vv. 5-10. 

It is a Messianic description. True in a meas- 
ure of the prophet himself, it was true in all 
its fulness of that servant of Jehovah who 
should come, and who has come, as Prophet and 
Saviour. Therefore, to have the experience here 
recorded is to enter into the Christ-life. What 
is the experience? It is to waken, day after day, 
under the touch of the Divine Teacher, to be 
taught how to comfort and strengthen other peo- 
ple, and to learn words with which to sustain the 
weary-hearted. It is wakening, listening, hear- 
ing, in the secret place of the Most High, for 
others' sake. 

Knowledge is good for the learner himself. 
If " the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is 
to behold the sun," the light of truth is sweeter 
and more satisfying. Knowledge may claim the 



HEARING FOR OTHERS' SAKE 207 

universe as its field, and uncounted ages as its 
learner's day. Look up into the starry spaces, 
and think what it must be to study and find out 
things, and see and know, forever. Yet there 
may be the dross of selfishness in the lover of 
knowledge. He may seek to know simply for the 
joy of knowing, and so for his own sake only. 
But not such is the divinely human way. The 
prophet would know that he may tell, gladly 
sharing the light of truth with his fellows. He 
would have " the tongue " as well as the mind of 
them that are taught. 

To "sustain with words him that is weary." 
Shall we ask where to find such a one? Indeed, 
it needs no search. Like the poor, he is always 
with us. Had we eyes to see, he would even now 
appear in our home, and at our side. It may be 
one who freely speaks of his burden and asks the 
sympathy and counsel of friends. It may be 
one who wears a brave and cheerful face while 
his heart is nigh unto breaking. Verily it is a 
gracious gift of God to be a strength-giver to the 
troubled or the burdened soul. In fulfilment 
of all that went before, it was a ministry of the 
Christ. Whence came His words of strength and 
healing? " The word which ye hear is not mine 
but the Father's who sent me." "The words 
which Thou gavest me, I have given unto them." 



208 THE LISTENING HEART 



THE OTHER SIDE OF DEATH 

" That disciple, therefore, whom Jesus loved saith 
unto Peter, It is the Lord." — John xxi. 7. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-14. 

In Jesus' reappearances after the Resurrection, 
nothing is more evident than that the pas- 
sage through death had wrought no essential 
change upon His humanity. He showed the 
same care-taking toward the disciples, the same 
authority over their life and work, the same spirit 
of close and holy companionship, as before. " Go 
tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, 
and there shall they see me." " Come, and break 
your fast." He had laid down His life, and had 
taken it again. 

Shall we not learn from Him who thus became 
the first-fruits of those that slept, the truth of the 
identity of personal being, and the persistence 
of love, here and on the other side of death? 
Said Bernard of Clairvaux, in the funeral sermon 
for his brother Gerard : " Thou hast discarded 
thine infirmities but not thine affections. l Love 
never faileth ' ; thou wilt not forget me at the 
last." What is it that makes one's friend dear, 
or one's own life precious? Not circumstances, 
not place and time, not the tie of outward asso- 



THE OTHER SIDE OF DEATH 209 

ciation, not the flesh : these are but the treasure- 
box in which lies the untold wealth. It is the 
real human self that gives the transcendent worth 
to life and love. And over this personal self 
death has no power. Out of the Divinely ap- 
pointed sleep it will awake the same. Death is 
not the loss of personality. There are those 
whom I long with inexpressible longing to see 
again. The time that has intervened, with its 
long dreamy succession of days and nights, since 
they went away, has not dimmed the image of 
them I hold in my heart. Often has my spirit 
been prone to cry out with tears, that even for 
one short hour I might see their faces, and talk 
with them about many things, as in the days of 
long-ago. How welcome would they be this mo- 
ment at my side! 

" Whatever change the years have wrought, 
I find not yet one lonely thought 
That cries against my wish for thee." 

My Father and my God, Thou hast awakened 
this love and longing, unsubdued by time or 
death. Thou hast given me these brothers and 
sisters of the soul. Are they not in Thy keeping 
there, in the world of spiritual realities, as I in 
this fleeting world of flesh and time? Let me 
meet not another, but themselves again. 



210 THE LISTENING HEART 



WHAT IS IT TO GLORIFY GOD? 

" Now this He spake signifying by what manner of 
death he should glorify God." — John xxi. 19. 

Contextual reading, vv. 15-23. 

A glory is not something from without. It 
can come only from within. It is the outshining 
in splendour of some inner excellence. If one 
had the power thoroughly to analyse the rosebush 
in bloom, or the ruby's perpetual beauty, or the 
sun shining in his strength, one would doubtless 
find in the very constitution of its being the 
reason and source of its visible splendour. Sim- 
ilarly the glory of a man is not in the tasteful or 
gorgeous apparel that may be put upon him, nor 
in the beautiful house he may live in, but in the 
strength, or intelligence, or goodness that appears 
in his person and conduct. It is not a matter of 
clothing or habitation, but of nerve and muscle, 
or mind, or character. 

Now if this is so, how can we glorify — that is to 
say, make glorious — any object, without somehow 
making it actually better than it is? Who, for 
example, could hope to glorify the sun? Can we 
add a single beam to its brightness? Kindle the 
whole earth into one electric flame, and see. 



WHAT IS IT TO GLORIFY GOD? 211 

Nothing may be either added to or taken from 
the sun's glory. 

But one may enlarge the sphere of the sun's 
shining. One may open the windows of a room 
and let the sunlight be spread abroad within, 
where all was dark before. Or, the oculist may 
remove a cataract from the diseased eye, and re- 
store the irradiate earth and sky to sense-percep- 
tion. Thus may the world of sunlight be en- 
larged by human hands, and the sun be thereby 
declaratively glorified. 

" Signifying by what manner of death he 
should glorify God." Make God more excellent 
in Himself? The very interrogation seems al- 
most profane. But suppose that we may so live 
— or die — as to make God known to those who 
knew Him not. Suppose that we may catch 
some beams of the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God from the face of Jesus Christ, and 
reflect them into a sin-darkened soul. Suppose 
that we should so witness for God in purity and 
kindness of life, that some person might catch a 
new view of Him in whose heart all purity and 
kindness were born. That is to make God glori- 
ous to such a soul. And we were made for that. 
" I beseech Thee," said Moses, " show me Thy 
glory." But it was Moses' own calling, as it is 
every man's, in life and in death, to show forth 
God's glory. 



212 THE LISTENING HEAET 



BENEDICITE 

" Praise ye Jehovah. 
Praise God in His sanctaury ; 
Praise Him in the firmament of His power. 
Praise Him for His mighty acts; 
Pxaise Him according to His excellent great- 
ness. . . . 
Let everything that hath breath praise Jehovah." 

—Psa. cl. 1, 2, 6. 

Contextual reading, the Psalm. 

If it be asked, how sub-human creatures, " every- 
thing that hath breath," and even the inani- 
mate firmament of heaven, may praise the 
Ever-Living One, the answer must be, that in 
fact they in their sphere are doing so more per- 
fectly than we in ours. Because, obedient to 
their nature's law, they do the will of Him who 
made them, which is the highest note of praise 
that either creature or child of God can reach. 

But their sphere has no such meaning and 
magnitude as ours. Theirs is a kingdom of the 
unconscious, the necessitated, the unmoral ; ours, 
a kingdom of the spirit. They must fulfil the 
purpose of their creation, we may refuse; but 
fulfilling it, we offer to God a richer sacrifice of 



BENEDICITE 213 



thanksgiving than they. So it was a golden word 
of Chrysostom, " The true Shekinah is man." 
There may show forth more of the glory of God 
from the life of one good man than from all the 
" trees of the Lord " that blossom, or birds that 
sing, or starry worlds that shine. 

" Lift up your hearts." 
We lift them up unto the Lord." 

Let His mighty acts and His excellent great- 
ness in earth and sky find an articulate voice in 
our songs. With His holy Church universal, 
with all whose hearts have been kindled into 
grateful love, with the celestial multitude that 
no man can number, let us extol that Name which 
is above every name. ; " Whoso offereth praise 
glorifieth Me." But the worship is perfected 
only when it becomes service, the words of praise 
in the sanctuary when they are bodied forth in 
deeds of kindness at home, adoration when it pre- 
pares the heart for ministration. In this show- 
ing forth of His praise in the daily doing of His 
will, let all His sons and daughters unite, tread- 
ing with busy feet that path of obedience 

" Trodden one, best of all ! 
By the Feet at which we fall." 



214 THE LISTENING HEART 



BENEDICTION 

" Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace 
in believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power 
of the Holy Spirit." — Bom. xv. 13. 

Contextual reading, vv. 1-12. 

It is an apostolic benediction upon unseen 
friends. Paul had often intended to visit them, 
and had been hindered hitherto. But he sends 
them this letter, the greatest of all it had been 
given him to write, in which he pours forth with- 
out stint his knowledge of the " mystery " of the 
gospel, and his own constraining love. It was 
enough that they were his brethren in Christ : for 
love takes little account of intervening lands or 
seas, and is ever on the wing to reach and bless 
its objects. 

Faith, joy, peace, hope — Paul could no more 
have imparted these blessings as from himself 
than he could have created a world. They are all 
thoughts of God, creations of His good will, gifts 
of His grace. But an Apostle, or any other 
Christian, might mediate a Divine blessing to his 
fellows. How? 

By whatever words of truth he should write 
or speak, by coming to see them as he longs to 



BENEDICTION 215 

do, by love and sympathy and service, by the 
penetrating power of example, this chief pastor 
of the Christian people might become a means of 
the grace of God to them — and they, in like man- 
ner, even the humblest of them, to him. " That 
I with you may be comforted [strengthened] in 
you, each of us by the other's faith." 

There are persons whom to be with awakens 
the sense of a divine presence. Human life as 
they live it, in faith and joy, in peace and hope, 
reflects a light not from the sun, but from the 
Father of lights, upon every sympathetic ob- 
server. They bring the unseen and hoped-for 
near. In their faces men see the Eternal. 

Thou God of hope, it will be blessedness in- 
deed, if Thou wilt make me in some little measure 
such a benediction to others. 



THE END 



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